Gabriel Jackson
Gabriel Jackson’s reputation as a choral composer has led to his liturgical pieces forming part of the repertoire of many of Britain's leading cathedral and collegiate choirs. In 2003 he won the liturgical category at the inaugural British Composer Awards.
Over recent years his music has been equally focussed on instrumental compositions, commissions including Kenidjack for alto saxophone, strings and percussion, works for guitarist Tom Kerstens, organist Michael Bonaventure, Lunar Sax Quartet, for whom he wrote LM-7: Aquarius, and the Psophos Quartet who premiered String Quartet No. 3: Llanandras Melodies at the Presteigne Festival 2007.
Performances and broadcasts take place worldwide, and Jackson’s music is being recorded with increasing frequency with works available on NMC, Metier, Usk, GFR, Lammas, Priory, Telarc, York Ambisonic, and the British Music Label. Delphian Records released a disc devoted to his choral music in 2005 and a Christmas CD including The Magi and Thou whose birth in December 2007. A choral disc performed by Polyphony is due for release by Hyperion later in 2008.
Works from 2007 include choral commissions from the Musicians Benevolent Fund for the Festival of St. Cecilia at Westminster Abbey and BBC Radio 3 Choir of the Year, Chantage, for the British Composer Awards ceremony. His commission for the John Armitage Memorial Trust, The Spacious Firmament, combined the forces of choir, organ, and brass quintet, and was premiered to great acclaim by the BBC Singers, Onyx Brass and Stephen Disley, under Nicholas Cleobury at St Bride’s Fleet Street in April 2008. May 2008 saw David Wilde give the premiere of Jackson’s Piano Sonata at the Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh.
Upcoming premieres include a Requiem for the Vasari Singers on Remembrance Day, 11 November 2008 at St Martin-in-the-Fields, supported by the PRS Foundation: www.vasarisingers.org
Gabriel Jackson has been an Oxford University Press ‘house’ composer since 2005.
Here's what Gabriel has been listening to...
Mary & Elizabeth at Westminster Abbey (Hyperion)
For me, 16th-century English music is the greatest music ever written and it has had a powerful influence on my own work. This sumptuous new recording by the choir of Westminster Abbey offers a lush sequence of masterpieces by Tye, Tallis, Sheppard, Byrd and White that are all associated with Queen Mary Tudor or her sister Elizabeth I. As well as being a fascinating snapshot of how the doctrinal changes forced on the church affected musicians, the disc is also a triumphant reclamation of this repertoire by the all-male choir (such as its composers would have expected). At it its heart is the awesome 17-minute Votive Antiphon Vox Patris Caelestis by William Mundy, here given a performance of stunning virtuosity and thrilling cumulative power.
David Ruffin: The Motown Solo Albums Vols 1 & 2 (Hip-o-Select)
I have always been a Soulboy and David Ruffin was one of RnB's very greatest singers. His gruff high baritone, by turns pleading, proud, heartbroken and triumphant, always has a compelling directness and emotional honesty, with no theatrics, just a plain-speaking authenticity. I have been wallowing in this complete series of seven solo albums he recorded after leaving The Temptations in 1969. It is fascinating, too, to hear how Motown's production style evolved through the 1970s, for the slightly generic pop-soul of the earliest records, through the dark, underrated Me and Rock'nRoll are here to stay (produced by the visionary Norma Whitfeld), ending with the lush, orchestrated disco-soul of Van McCoy. The standout from this period has to be the transcendent Walk away from love, its shimmering (slightly cheesy) groove offset by the hoarse magnificence of Ruffin's stunning vocal performance. One of the greatest records ever made.
Ross Edwards: Symphonies 1 & 4 (ABC Classics)
The Australian Ross Edwards has to be one of the most underrated living composers and I find his work beautiful, fascinating and unique. Turning his back on conventional modernism in the early 1980s he has developed a totally individual musical language embracing a rich modality, springing irregular dance rhythms, a quasi-oriental sense of timelessness, with echoes of Western plainchant and Australian birdsong. His first Symphony Da pacem, Domine, is a single brooding slow movement, a death-haunted meditation of great power. The fourth Symphony, Star Chant, is by contrast a celebration of the mystery and magnificence of the night sky, by turns tender, ecstatic and exotic. Fantastic stuff!