Blue Green Hill at St Endellion
Judith Weir 
Blue Green Hill
Nuits d’Afrique
Benjamin Graves
Roche Rock (world premiere, Kevos commission)
Helena Tulve
Stream
Barbara White
My barn having burned to the ground, I can now see the moon
Kevos at Kestle Barton
3pm & 6pm (two performances)
21 May 2017
Kestle Barton,
Manaccan, TR12 6HU
Jim Aitchison
(Ensembles) Together and Apart – complete
(2017, world premiere, Kevos commission)
[listen to the original piano versions here and see the accompanying art work]
Charlotte Bray
Upflight of Butterflies (2016, UK premiere of revised version)
Richard Causton
Phoenix (2006)
[listen to Phoenix here]
Alison Kay
Flux (2006)
[listen to Flux here]
“Inspiration grew from natural light in various forms: sunlight burning through dense clouds, piercing glimpse of blinding light catching your eye as you rush through the air” Charlotte Bray
Kestle Barton provides a unique backdrop for our programme featuring 4 of the most striking composers living and working in the UK today.
Light and motion in music are at the heart of the programme: Jim Aitchison’s Together and Apart, a Kevos commission, features sounds and silences in hypnotic sequence. Flux by Alison Kay moves from restraint and enigma toward a dramatic climax; Richard Causton’s Phoenix has light and fire in its delicate melodies and grand gestures while the dramatic effects of sunlight through cloud inspired Upflight of Butterflies from Charlotte Bray.
Kevos play Steve Reich
Kevos at Burrell Theatre 
7.30pm, 2 April 2017
Burrell Theatre, Truro
Steve Reich
Double Sextet (2008)
Come Out (1966)
Music for Pieces of Wood (1973)
Jim Aitchison
Together and Apart – part 1 (2017, world premiere, Kevos commission)
Anna Clyne
1987 (UK premiere)
Kevos at Cornwall Film Festival
8pm, 5 November 2016, The Poly, Falmouth
Ed Hughes
I was born, but….(2002)
Ben Comeau
Our Gang (World Premiere, Kevos commission, 2016)
I was born, but…. (1932) by the Japanese film director Yasujiro Ozu is one of the masterpieces of the silent era. Funny, profound and exquisitely beautiful, Ozu’s touching story about an ordinary Tokyo family is shot with an artist’s eye. The emotional landscape of the film is perfectly captured in Ed Hughes’s music with its characteristic lightness of touch.
To start the evening, Kevos present the world premiere of a specially commissioned piece by Cornishman Ben Comeau to accompany the short silent film Our Gang (1929).
Our Gang was commissioned with funds provided by The Belacqua Charitable Trust.
Kevos at Truro Festival
7 April 2016, Burrell Theatre, Truro
Fourteen Ways of Describing Rain
new music · silent film
Hanns Eisler
Fourteen Ways of Describing Rain (1941)
Ed Hughes
Light Cuts Through Dark Skies (2001)
Graham Fitkin
Ardent (1993)
Martin Butler
Jazz Machines (1990)
For its first concert, Kevos presents a rich, eclectic mix of music and silent film. Master film maker, Joris Ivens, spent two years filming the weather in and round his native Amsterdam. The resulting film, Regen (Rain) of 1929 is one of the great avant-garde documentaries and an atmospheric masterpiece of intricate visual patterns and subtle shifts of light and perspective.
Hanns Eisler wrote his haunting music, described as an exploration in the textures of sadness, in 1941 not as a subservient soundtrack to the film but as a counterpoint, an artistic equal. His personal blend of modernism and expressionism is wonderfully alive and communicative. Ed Hughes wrote his own response in 2001 and his crystalline, light-filled score weaves minimalist textures and renaissance polyphony amongst Ivens’ delicate imagery.
Both the Eisler and the Hughes will be played alongside the film Rain.
Complementing the two pieces with film are two of the great chamber works by British composers from the 1990s. Like the Hughes, both adapt minimalist techniques in highly personal ways. Graham Fitkin’s Ardent is earthy and ecstatic – an irresistible blend of rhythmic drive, febrile dances and powerful harmony. Martin Butler’s fast and quirky Jazz Machines, on the other hand, is an attempt to write the music that ‘machines might play, on the sly, when we’re not listening’.
