A composer of ferocious dramatic instincts
— Alex Ross
Semperoper in Dresden have announced more dates next season for their production of 4.48 Psychose. The opera had its german premiere run in Semper Zwei in April/May this year, with sold-out performances. The dates next season will be 7th, 9th, 10th, 13th and 15th September, and tickets can be booked here.
Sempoeroper have made a new video trailer of the production using rehearsal footage, which you can watch, above.
My new latest music theatre piece, Denis & Katya, has been announced for its premiere production with the lead commissioner Opera Philadelphia.  The work has been conceived and written with my long-time collaborator, Ted Huffman.  It is pseudo-documentary music theatre, taking a true story about two Russian teenagers who died in November 2016 after a stand-off with armed police.  It looks at the way the internet played a role in their death, and more generally, about how we interact with each other and show empathy in the internet age.  We hope that the form of the piece is particularly exciting in the way that it tells the story.
Denis & Katya will also your the UK in February/March 2020 with Music Theatre Wales, including the London performances at the Southbank Centre, and the piece will make its french premiere in Montpellier. Music Theatre Wales and Montpellier Opera are both co-commissioners with Opera Philadelphia.  More information about the piece and ticket booking is here, and the London performances are available to book here.
Denis & Katya has also been shortlisted for the prestigious Fedora Prize. Â The prize-giving ceremony is on June 28th in Venice.
From 6th—10th May, I will be the featured composer at the PLUG Festival, a contemporary music festival at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland in Glasgow. The PLUG Festival predominantly features the work of student composers from the conservatoire in an packed schedule of chamber concerts. I will be giving some consultation lessons to young composers there, and presenting a seminar on my work. On the final night of the festival, the Glasgow New Music Expedition will perform Illusions alongside some other new works by both students and established composers, all conducted by Richard Baker.
Some production images from the Prototype Festival / Royal Opera production of 4.48 Psychosis, January 2019. Directed by Ted Huffman, Design by Hannah Clark, Video by Pierre Martin, Light by D.M. Wood, Sound by Sound Intermedia and Fight Direction by RC-Annie. The performers featured in the photos are Gweneth-Ann Rand, Lucy Hall, Susanna Hurrell, Samantha Price, Rachael Lloyd and Lucy Schaufer, with the Contemporaneous Ensemble conducted by William Cole. All images taken by Paula Court. They can be used for press purposes with the appropriate credit.
4.48 Psychosis made its american premiere in New York City a few weeks ago at the Prototype Festival. The exceptional cast, orchestra and crew gave six performances of the Royal Opera production (directed by Ted Huffman) over eight days in the Baruch Performing Arts Centre. The performances were sold out, and the response from the press was incredible. Here is a small selection.
“there was no denying the sledgehammer power of Philip Venables’s “4.48 Psychosis”[…] Venables’s bent for politically charged topics is all the more conspicuous because of his frequent use of speaking voices, which are coördinated with rapid-fire instrumental lines. Yet he is also a composer of considerable refinement, who can weave ethereal textures from a few carefully chosen pitches. This combination of savagery and economy makes for an arrestingly original musical personality.” — Alex Ross, The New Yorker
“In his opera, which had its premiere with the Royal Opera in London in 2016, the composer Philip Venables has found in Kane’s material a landscape of iciness and sensitivity, in which speaking and singing flow into one another with uncanny ease. […] All in all, this “4.48”avoids neither the text’s moments of pitch-black humor nor its passages of luminous air; it doesn’t prettify Kane, nor does it make her brutality unendurable. Elegantly ferocious, it is this unclassifiable play as music.” — Zachary Woolfe, The New York Times
“Despite violence, Venables gives a rendering of depression that accentuates tenacity, intelligence, and humanity.” — Lana Norris, I Care If You Listen.
“Venables takes full advantage of the play’s meandering stream-of-consciousness in a searing, kaleidoscopic score which foregrounds the lyricism and brutality of Kane’s text. Venables’ score has an unremitting intensity, endowing Kane’s play with a visceral impact so often missing from theatrical productions of the work. Textual contrasts are pushed to extremes in a score that alternates between Artaudian delirium and baroque detachment. […] Ultimately, 4.48 Psychosis is a heart-stopping, utterly devastating night at the opera, not to be missed.” — Callum John Blackmore, Parterre Box
This profile by Tim Rutherford-Johnson (pictured above, photo by Anton Lukoszevieze) is adapted from a profile that first appeared in a programme-book for the BBC Proms 2018, for the premiere of Venables plays Bartók. Please contact Tim directly via his blog here if you would like to license this profile for your own programme or website.
Philip Venables’s work has always been concerned with continuity and discontinuity. His works cover subjects such as mental breakdown (the opera 4.48 Psychosis, 2016, after the play by the late Sarah Kane), gender politics (Illusions, 2015–17, and The Gender Agenda, 2018, created in collaboration with the ‘anti-drag’ performance artist David Hoyle) or the postmodern collapse of meaning (numbers 76–80: tristan and isolde and numbers 91–95, setting words by the late Simon Howard; both 2011). He has said that his music engages with ‘politics and sexuality, gender and violence’, yet it is equally interested in historical connections: the relationship of new work to old (Klaviertrio im Geiste, 2011), compositional kinships (Metamorphoses after Britten, 2010; Time Stands Still, 2008, after Dowland), and in his violin concerto for the BBC Proms, the intertwining of life stories involved in learning and being taught an instrument.
Venables was born in Chester and now lives between London and Berlin. He studied at Cambridge University and the Royal Academy of Music (with Philip Cashian and David Sawer), and with Julian Philips and James Weeks as Doctoral Composer-in-Residence at the Royal Opera House in a partnership with the Guildhall School of Music & Drama. This last led to the creation of 4.48 Psychosis and, in the wake of its success, a burst of sudden acclaim that includes a portrait CD for NMC Recordings and revivals of the opera in London (2018) and Dresden (2019).
Venables’s interest in formalised violence – not the blood and guts of Hollywood movies but a cool, aesthetic consideration – can take many forms. In The Revenge of Miguel Cotto, two percussionists create a steady pulse by thwacking punchbags with pieces of wood. In other works, such as the Howard settings or the music-theatre work
Illusions, the music continually cuts into and interrupts itself to throw into question what we think we know. In 4.48 Psychosis, the central character’s psychological collapse is portrayed in a score that jumps from robotic minimalism to waiting-room muzak to Purcellian lament.
Since 2011 the other constant has been text. Like two forebears on whose music he has composed commentaries, Dowland and Britten, Venables is a sensitive and innovative composer in English. For him, this means contemporary British English in all its registers from the street to the academy – the language in which Kane, Hoyle and Howard revel and revelled. Like them, Venables speaks a language that can dance as well as fight, and that reflects (or deflects) as much as it punches.
I have been awarded a month-long residency at the Watermill Center in the Hamptons, NY, in January 2019.  I will take up the residency with Ted Huffman, and together we will spend the month working on our new opera, Denis & Katya.  The Watermill Center was founded by director Robert Wilson to provide space for visual artists, theatre makers, composers and dancers to develop new work.  Immediately after the residency we travel to Philadelphia for the first round of workshops on the new opera.
The Royal Opera production of 4.48 Psychosis will make its american debut in New York City on 5th January 2019, headlining the Prototype Festival. Prototype is North America’s largest promoter of new opera and music theatre, and their January showcase festival takes place in venues across the city during the first two weeks of January each year. 4.48 Psychosis will run for six performances at the Baruch Performing Arts Center in midtown, and will feature the cast from the Royal Opera company, who revived the opera in London earlier this year. Tickets for the performances will go on sale on 1st October, here.
The Riot Ensemble is performing two pieces of mine, Illusions and Numbers 91–95, at Kings Place on Monday 17th September as part of the new ‘Luminate’ series.  It’s a semi-portrait concerto, with other composers Sarah Nemtsov, Lee Hyla and Helga Arias Parra also featured.  I’m really excited that the spoken part in Numbers 91–95 will be done by singer Sarah Dacey, from Juice Ensemble, whom I’ve known for a long while but not properly had the chance to work with.  I’ll be at the concert, and giving a short, free, pre-concert interview with Tim Rutherford-Johnson.
Venables plays Bartók, my new violin concerto written for Pekka Kuusisto, received a warm response at its premiere at the BBC Proms on Friday 17th August, with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Sakari Oramo.  A huge thanks to Pekka, Sakari, the orchestra, Ian Dearden and Jot Davies for their roles in the performance.
Press reviews were generally good, including a 5-star review in Bachtrack (“something intensely moving, profound even, in the way the work unfolded”) and 4 stars in the Guardian (“virtuosity and substance”).  I also wrote a piece for the Guardian in the run up to the premiere about the providence of the piece and the life of Rudolf Botta, the main protagonist of the piece – you can read it here.
The BBC Radio 3 broadcast is still on BBC iPlayer until Sunday 17th September. The preamble and interviews to the concerto begin around 18’30” and the performance (with the introduction by Pekka, which is part of the piece) at 27’30”.
Some production images from the revival of the Royal Opera production of 4.48 Psychosis, May 2018. Directed by Ted Huffman, Design by Hannah Clark, Video by Pierre Martin, Light by D.M. Wood, Sound by Sound Intermedia. The performers featured in the photos are Gweneth-Ann Rand, Lucy Hall, Susanna Hurrell, Samantha Price, Rachael Lloyd and Lucy Schaufer, with the Chroma Ensemble conducted by Richard Baker. All images taken by Stephen Cummiskey © The Royal Opera. They can be used for press purposes with the appropriate credit.
The recent performances of the Royal Opera production of 4.48 Psychosis have come to an end. We didn’t expect much press for a revival, of course, but the reviews there have been have been outstanding. The performances took place at the Lyric Theatre Hammersmith in April and May 2018. Here are some links to some of the reviews:
(photo: Stephen Cummiskey)
The BBC Proms announced their 2018 Festival a few weeks ago, including a new violin concerto that I’m writing for Pekka Kuusisto and the BBC Symphony Orchestra. The piece will be performed in the Proms on 17th August 2018, conducted by Sakari Oramo. It is kind of ‘radio music theatre’ with the violin as the main character, and the piece explores my own journey through learning the violin, to a moment when I met my teacher’s teacher, the hungarian violinist, teacher and refugee, Rudolf Botta. It is all framed round nine short Hungarian folk dances or miniatures, collected or composed by Bartók, hence the double credit of the piece: Venables/Bartók – Venables plays Bartók.
Tickets for the proms are available here.
4.48 Psychose will gets its premiere at Dresden’s Semperoper Zwei next year. This will be a new version of 4.48 Psychosis in German, based on the official translation of Sarah Kane’s play by Durs Grünbein. The premiere will take place on 26th April 2019, and there will be other events surrounding it, including a portrait concert of some of my chamber work. I’m excited to get working on the new score for the german version this summer – because of the tight knitting of text and music, about 40% of the opera needs to be re-scored. More information about the performances are here.
My debut album, Below the Belt, is now available for pre-ordering via NMC here. The disc will be launched on 16th March 2018. The works on the disc are:
The Revenge of Miguel Cotto,
Klaviertrio im Geiste,
Numbers 76–80,
Numbers 91-95,
Metamorphoses after Britten,
Illusions.
The disc features David Hoyle, the London Sinfonietta, Phoenix Piano Trio, Ligeti Quartet, Leigh Melrose, Dario Dugandzic, Nick Blackburn, Melinda Maxwell, Natalie Raybould, Lewis Bretherton, George Chambers and Ashley Mercer, conducted by Richard Baker.
Here are press photos of Philip Venables, copyright Harald Hoffmann. They were taken in April 2017 for Ricordi Musikverlag to coincide with my signing a contract with them. They can be used for promotional use with the appropriate credit. Click on the images for very high-resolution versions.
On Wednesday night, I won the British Composer Award for Best Stage Work, for 4.48 Psychosis.  The awards, organised by BASCA and supported by the PRS for Music Foundation and BBC Radio 3, were held at the British Museum.  Other winners included two of my favourite composers, Andrew Hamilton and Rebecca Saunders.  This was the first time I had had a piece shortlisted for the awards.  The awards will be broadcast on BBC Radio 3 on 10th December in a special programme.
Dates for revival performances of 4.48 Psychosis have been announced by the Lyric Theatre Hammersmith and the Royal Opera. The production, which premiered in 2016 at the Lyric Theatre, co-produced by the Royal Opera and the Guildhall School of Music & Drama, will be performed again on the following dates, all at 7.30pm:
Monday 23rd April 2018 – preview performance / free first night for local residents
Tuesday 24th April 2018 – Performance 1
Thursday 26th April 2018 – Performance 2
Saturday 28th April 2018 – Performance 3
Monday 30th April 2018 – Performance 4
Wednesday 2nd May 2018 – Performance 5
Friday 4th May 2018 – Performance 6
My ongoing collaboration with performer and composer Laura Bowler and director Patrick Eakin Young is being shown as a ‘work in progress’ at Manchester Opera Project on 27th July at Halle St Peter’s in Manchester. This project has been developed during two residency weeks at Snape Maltings courtesy of Aldeburgh Music, and it weaves together verbatim transcripts of the accounts of female rape survivors with other texts about rape culture and the patriarchy. It’s a difficult project and has been challenging for us to navigate, but we are making good progress. This showing will be about 20 minutes, and will be alongside other new monodramas by AilÃs NÃ RÃain and Michael Rose/Tom Jenks. We are really grateful to PRS for Music Foundation and Arts Council England for supporting this project.
Thursday July 27, 2017, 8.30pm at Halle St Peter’s, Ancoats, Manchester.
My collaboration with David Hoyle for Manchester International Festival played every hour of every day on Canal Street through the whole of MIF 2017 – a total of 204 plays! It was recorded with the brass of Manchester Camerata and David, and then made into a sound-art installation across seven speakers along the main strip of Canal Street in the heart of Manchester’s Gay Village. The piece was a tribute to the community, but also touched on themes of assimilation, military industrialisation and gender conformity. The installation was part of MIF’s Music for a Busy City, including other pieces by Olga Neuwirth, Matthew Herbert, Anna Meredith, Huang Ruo and Mohammed Fairouz.
The Irish webzine Buzz.ie said:
Philip Venables’ equally astonishing Canal Street installation also utilises the number of speakers to maximum effect. It is a riveting piece of hi-tech theatre driven by music that is at once menacing, mournful and rousing. Venables’ treatment of the utterly charming David Hoyle’s provocative part polemic, part poem had me rushing from speaker to speaker to try to take it all in.
Huge thanks to Manchester International Festival and Producer Tom Higham – a fantastic team to work with.