Anna Meredith: Women Make Music

Anna Meredith, one of the UK’s most exciting young female composers, is being commissioned by Town Hall & Symphony Hall Birmingham, to create a 12-15-minute work that focuses on the overlap and tension between notated and improvised music for the Mike Fletcher Jazz Orchestra, a 14-piece ensemble of multi-instrumentalists based in Birmingham. This incredibly diverse and virtuosic big band play over 35 instruments between them, and this new work will explore the limits of what these exceptional players can do, both as individuals and as a collective sound. The commission will be premiered by the Mike Fletcher Jazz Orchestra on Thursday 9 October 2014 at Symphony Hall as part of The Hour series. Mike Fletcher has been announced as an ECHO (European Concert Hall Organisation) Rising Star for 2014/15 so a second performance is being planned to take place as part of his tour across the halls of the ECHO network.