All sessions take place in the CAPITAL Centre Studio unless indicated otherwise10am Registration and coffee on arrival Foyer11am Welcome and introduction by Professor Carol Chillington Rutter, Director of the CAPITAL Centre11.05am -12 noon Sally Beamish, Fiona Sampson and the Coull Quartet Sally, the Quartet and Fiona discuss the commissioning and collaborating process in relation to their new work. They’ll illustrate alternative approaches, from spoken voice and the wordless reproduction of a poem in music, to lieder cycles for singer and string quartet, using live and recorded examples and their own work.12-1pm David Harsent: 'Toads with Women's Breasts' 1-1.45pm Buffet lunch Foyer1.45-3.15pm Musical influences, chaired by David Morley Stephen Goss: ‘Songs without Words: Setting Poetry in Music’ Ruth Fainlight: ‘Words and Music’ Alan Brownjohn: ‘On Influence: Agreements and Disagreements’3.15-3.45pm Tea Foyer3.45-4.45pm Don Paterson: ‘The UnderWord: The Meaning of Music and the Music of Meaning’4.45-5.30pm Round table of speakers and summing up, chaired by Fiona Sampson6-7pm Coull Quartet 30^th anniversary concert: University House Atrium Zoltan Kodaly Quartet No. 2 Op. 10 Howard Skempton Expectancy (with the University Chamber Choir directed by Paul McGrath)

SPEAKERS

 

Sally Beamish Formerly a viola player, Sally Beamish has worked full-time since 1990 as a composer, and her work has been performed and broadcast all over the world. She has 6 CDs on the BIS label, and is recently published by Norsk Musikforlag. At present she is working with such diverse artists as Branford Marsalis, Steven Isserlis and actor Samuel West. Alan Brownjohn A regular broadcaster, reviewer and contributor to journals including the Times Literary Supplement, Encounter and the Sunday Times, Alan Brownjohn was poetry critic for the New Statesman and was Chairman of the Poetry Society between 1982 and 1988. He has also served on the Arts Council literature panel, was a Labour councillor and a candidate for Parliament. His first collection of poetry, The Railings, was published in 1961. Other poetry books include Collected Poems 1952-1983 (1983, re-issued in 1988) and The Observation Car (1990). He is also the author of three novels, The Way You Tell Them: A Yarn of the Nineties (1990), The Long Shadows (1997) and A Funny Old Year (2001), as well as two books for children and a critical study of the poet Philip Larkin. Alan Brownjohn's most recent collection of poetry is The Men Around Her Bed (2004). A Collected Poems was published in 2006. Coull Quartet One of Britain's most respected and longest-established ensembles, the Coull Quartet has performed throughout the UK, the USA, Europe and the Far East. It has given many radio and television broadcasts, has an impressive list of commissions to its name, including works by Nicholas Maw, Robert Simpson, David Matthews and Edward Cowie, and has made numerous critically acclaimed recordings, including the complete Schubert and Mendelssohn Quartets. The Coull Quartet has been Quartet-in-Residence at the University of Warwick since 1977. Ruth Fainlight Ruth Fainlight has published thirteen collections and selections of her poems. She received the Cholmondeley and Hawthornden Awards, and her collection "Sugar-Paper Blue" was shortlisted for the Whitbread Award. She has written three libretti: one for the Channel Four series, Without Walls, two for the Royal Opera House`s Garden Venture - the first of which, The Dancer Hotoke, with music by Erika Fox, was nominated for a Laurence Olivier Award in 1992 in the category Outstanding Achievements in Opera. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Stephen Goss Stephen Goss's music has been performed in over forty countries worldwide and has been recorded by more than a dozen record labels, including EMI, Decca, and Telarc. Recent commissions have come from: Grammy ® winner David Russell, William Bennett, Xuefei Yang, and The Yehudi Menuhin School. Stephen's piece, The Garden of Cosmic Speculation (2005), was featured on The South Bank Show on ITV1. As a guitarist, Stephen Goss has worked with many of today's leading composers, such as Takemitsu, Henze and Elliott Carter. He has played concertos with the Bournemouth Sinfonietta, the English Sinfonia and other leading orchestras, toured and recorded extensively with the Tetra guitar quartet, and performed alongside John Williams and Paco Peña . He is currently Head of Composition at the University of Surrey, UK. www.stephengoss.net David Harsent David Harsent’s Legion, won the Forward Prize and was shortlisted for both the Whitbread Award and the T.S. Eliot Prize. His Selected Poems, published last year, was shortlisted for the Griffin International Poetry Prize. His work in music theatre has involved collaborations with a number of composers, but most often with Harrison Birtwistle, and has been performed at the Royal Opera House, Carnegie Hall, the Concertgebouw, the Kammeroper (Vienna), the Proms and on BBC 2 and Channel 4. He is Distinguished Writing Fellow at Sheffield, Hallam University and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. David Morley David Morley has published 18 books, including nine volumes of poetry, won 13 literary awards and gained two awards for his teaching, including a National Teaching Fellowship. The University of Warwick awarded him a personal Chair in 2007 and a D.Litt. in 2008. David writes essays, reviews and criticism for The Guardian, Poetry Review, PN Review and The Times Higher Educational Supplement. Recent books include The Cambridge Introduction to Creative Writing from CUP, The Invisible Kings from Carcanet Press, an anthology of new Romanian Poetry and a new anthology of poems by children. David is Director of the Warwick Writing Programme at the University of Warwick where he is Professor of Creative Writing and Director of The Warwick Prize for Writing. Don Paterson Don Paterson is Poetry Editor for Picador and teaches Creative Writing at St Andrews University. His most recent collections of poetry are Landing Light, which won the Whitbread Poetry Award and T S Eliot Prize, and Orpheus, his versions of Rilke’s Sonnets to Orpheus. He is a solo jazz guitarist; has worked with the ensemble Lammas and composes for the classical instrument. Fiona Sampson

Fiona Sampson has published fifteen books, most recently Common Prayer (2007), short-listed for the T.S.Eliot Prize. Her awards include the Newdigate Prize; ‘Trumpeldor Beach’ was short-listed for the Forward single poem prize (2006). She contributes regularly to The Guardian and The Irish Times and is the editor of Poetry Review. She was Warwick/ RSC Fellow of Creativity and Performance at the CAPITAL Centre at the University of Warwick in 2007-8.