John Casken joins our Vice Presidents
Photo of John Casken by Sarah Jamieson
We are delighted that John Casken, composer and Emeritus Professor of Music at The University of Manchester, has accepted our invitation to become a JCS Vice President.
John’s extensive portfolio of compositions includes orchestral, chamber, vocal, choral music and music for the stage in the form of two operas, a melodrama, a monodrama, and a dramatic work based on King Lear. His works have been performed at the BBC Proms and many UK and international festivals, including Warsaw, Tokyo, Aspen, Maastricht, Salzburg, Vienna, Montepulciano and Schleswig Holstein.
As a music academic, he lectured at the universities of Birmingham and Durham (where his students included James MacMillan) and between 1992 and 2008 he was Professor of Music at The University of Manchester.
John has for many years lived in Northumberland within sight of the Cheviot Hills and near the Northumbrian coast. The local landscape, its people and their stories have influenced many of his works, as the JCS discovered when we were invited by John to open his Wooler Arts Summer Concert Series earlier this year. We have just completed recording a selection of his choral works for the Métier label, and it was during one of these recording sessions that we ‘popped the question’ of becoming a JCS Vice President.
Our Music Director, Peter Broadbent, said:
“It has been a great pleasure for me to work with John over the last eighteen months to get to know the man and his music. His choice of texts is meticulous, and he sets them with great skill and understanding, illuminating the character and meaning in a direct musical language which presents singers with challenges which they relish. We were honoured that John dedicated a new piece, Floore of Allegories, a setting of a George Herbert poem, to the Joyful Company, and we are equally happy that he has accepted the invitation.”
John Casken writes:
“I feel very honoured and privileged to be invited to become a Vice-President of JCS. Having got to know the choir over the past couple of years when they have programmed a number of works of mine, a strong and positive relationship was already developing.
“I am very proud to have introduced JCS to Northumberland audiences by inviting Peter Broadbent and his choir to open my 2024 series of Wooler Arts Summer Concerts with a bold and imaginative programme including some of my own pieces. I was delighted how warm and enthusiastic the responses were from the large audiences in both Wooler and the next evening in Alnwick.
“Working with JCS has been a very rich and rewarding experience, none more so than in the recent recording sessions for our new CD of some of my choral music. As Vice-President I look forward to coming to concerts, to supporting the choir by promoting it in any way I can and sharing in the life of the choir as it moves forward. That our relationship is now put on an even firmer footing gives me much pleasure.”
***
Photos taken at the Métier recording sessions in September 2024 are courtesy of Elaine Gould, executive producer, and feature John Casken, conductor Peter Broadbent, recording engineer and producer David Lefeber, soprano and baritone soloists Rozanna Madylus and Marcus Farnsworth and JCS chorus members.