Keep up to date with recent news about my work

Book launches in Edinburgh, Cumnock and Aberdeen
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Book launches in Edinburgh, Cumnock and Aberdeen

This week I will be taking part in the first of three book launches for The Music of James MacMillan at Blackwell's Bookshop in Edinburgh - further book launches will take place at The Cumnock Tryst in October and at the SOUND festival in November.

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The Music of James MacMillan
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The Music of James MacMillan

I recently received my copies of The Music of James MacMillan and they look amazing! It was a strangely overwhelming experience leafing through the book, something that I had first imagined back in 2006 and had spent the past two years intensely working on.

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On The London Festival of Contemporary Church Music...
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On The London Festival of Contemporary Church Music...

I’m going to begin this with an admission: I’m not a very collaborative composer – some composers are, and I admire them for that – but I am not. As I approach my fortieth year I think I’ve collaborated with poets, librettists, directors or producers at maximum 10 times, and have never struck up a lasting collaboration that has resulted in multiple pieces or projects.

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The Month Ahead
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The Month Ahead

There are various performances of my work taking place in May and June, particularly as part of the London Festival of Contemporary Church Music. On the 11 May Il Suono will perform Invocation (2010) with the trumpeter from the work's first performance, Simon Desbruslais in Hampstead with a performance of my organ work Exsultet (2014) the following day at St Pancras Church.

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Review of 2018
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Review of 2018

2018 was a slightly different year for me, still full of successes across my professional life, but one with a very different focus from previous. As a composer, the highlight was the commission, performance, broadcast and recording of Ave Maria, mater Dei a new work commissioned by the Genesis Foundation for The Sixteen.

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On Bob Chilcott's 'The Shepherd's Carol'...

As always, I try to write a festive blog entry every year in the vain hope that it might be the apex of someone’s holiday season; the signal that Christmas has really started, and the festivities can begin. I’m joking. I do it because I love Christmas music and I’m stuck into a pattern of doing this every year.

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'Ave Maria, mater Dei' on BBC Radio 3 (again!)

I was thrilled to hear that my recent work Ave Maria, mater Dei was broadcast on BBC Radio 3 again this month, on Record Review. The piece was incredibly well received by the panel of critics and the CD as a whole was one of their Records of the Year.

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