Andrew Webb-Mitchell

PRESS RELEASE

Beijing, April 3, 2014

Wray Armstrong, Chairman of Armstrong International Music and Arts, Beijing, announced today that British composer Andrew Webb-Mitchell will be one of the featured composers at this year’s Beijing Modern Music Festival in May.

BMMF has confirmed that its 2014 Closing Gala will include world and Beijing premiere performances of two songs by Mr. Webb-Mitchell. Ye Xiaogang, China’s leading contemporary composer and Director of the Beijing Modern Music Festival, selected the works by Webb-Mitchell to be included alongside works by more than a dozen leading Chinese and international composers, from China, Russia, Canada, USA, Great Britain and more.

The songs, Dances of Life and Death and The Inspiration of Night are drawn from the composer’s symphonic song cycle, Songs of Awe and Wonder, with words by British poet Joanna Boulter.  It will be performed on May 22nd at the Beijing Concert Hall by Chinese soprano Ruan Yu Qun with the Shenzhen Symphony Orchestra conducted by Hu Yong Yan.

Mr. Webb-Mitchell’s symphonic song cycle is, in the words of the outstanding British violinist Tasmin Little, ‘music full of passion and heroism, with glorious harmony and beautiful textures’.  The composer describes the work as being written ‘in a direct and lyrical musical language… contemporary in style yet filled with references to the past’.

The composer is Composer-in-Residence of the British Schools Foundation, and is currently resident of Zhuhai, Guangdong Province, China, where he is very active as an educator and choral conductor.

For more information, please visit the composer’s website, www.theenglishcomposer.com, or contact Wray Armstrong at Armstrong Music and Arts, on wray.armstrong@armstrongmusic.co or Karen Pitchford of KHJ Communications, on pitchfordkaren@gmail.com.