Kettle’s Yard this month launches a new music series curated by composer Stephen Montague which runs until May.

Montague is this year’s New Music Associate at Kettle’s Yard. In January, Stephen introduces a series of six Sunday lunchtime concerts and two evening concerts featuring some of the most outstanding contemporary music talent from the UK and beyond.
 

He said: “The series is designed to stimulate an open mind with an array of new works and sounds from the 20th and 21st centuries. I’d like to think of it as a nicely manipulated sonic adventure series the public would be sad to have missed.”
 

There are four world premieres, including two new Kettle’s Yard commissions.
The season opens on January 30 with the Aika Collective unveiling a new work by Hannah Varty for solo dancer and two cellos in prone position, a Kettle’s Yard commission, with choreography and performance by Finnish dancer Lisa Ilona Jäntti.
 

On February 6, Italian harpist Gabriella Dall’Olio plays music by Paul Patterson and Sylvano Busotti in a programme described as ‘heaven and hell’, using a prepared harp as well as her usual instrument. She also gives the world premiere of Alexander Thomas’ Streak. On February 20, The Wu String Quartet bring Ligeti’s String Quartet No 1, Cheryl Frances Hoad’s My Day in Hell and Stephen Montague’s own Tam Linn.
 

The brilliant young American pianist Eliza McCarthy’s concert on March 6 is titled The Piano Inside/Out in two halves: Exotic percussion and Noisy Virtuoso including works by Crumb, Cage, Bartok and Ives. The Langham Research Centre comprises four BBC Producers and a young singer, Catherine Carter, who revive archive electronic sounds in a programme on 8 May laced with grit and humour and including music by Cage and the world premiere of their own new work, their ‘sonic gift’ to the series.

The final lunchtime concert on May 22 introduces Benjamin Powell, Winner of the British Contemporary Piano Competition 2010 and praised as one of the most astonishing pianists to ever win the competition. He plays Butler, Harvey and Carter.
 

There are two full-length evening concerts in the series. The first, on March 2, is a Composer Portrait of Stephen Montague, featuring chamber works. His music is described as having “…a cogency, theatricality and impact that immediately engages an audience.” (Berlingske Tidende, Copenhagen).

Virtuoso pianist Philip Mead is joined by the Cambridge New Music Ensemble in a programme of inventive instrumental works including Montague’s Southern Lament, Haiku, The Hammer Hawk and After Ives…
 

The series culminates on May 17 with what has frequently been described as Britain’s leading electro-acoustic music theatre ensemble – Frances Lynch and Electric Voice Theatre who will perform a programme including John Cage’s Song Books and Eduardo Reck Miranda’s Requiem per una veu perduda.
 

Kettle’s Yard is a beautiful and unique house containing a distinctive collection of modern art. It was founded by H.S. 'Jim' Ede as a place where visitors would 'find a home and a welcome, a refuge of peace and order, of the visual arts and of music.
 

The New Music Programme is supported by the Faculty of Music, University of Cambridge, The Radcliffe Trust, The PRS Foundation, The RVW Trust and The Holst Foundation. More information and online booking can we found on the website www.kettlesyard.co.uk/newmusic or by phone on 01223 748100.
 

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