Richard Baker: The Composers’ Fund
Richard Baker: The Composers’ Fund
Richard Baker/NMC Recordings release of orchestral and ensemble works
Richard Baker is a composer based in Ceredigion, Wales. His distinctive work is often concerned with the transcription and transformation of extra-musical material, and is characterised by a refined ear for harmony and instrumental colour, coupled with a bold and often surprising rhetoric. In a career during which he also made his name as a sought-after conductor of contemporary music and opera, he has maintained a steady output of substantial, thought-provoking works. Milestones include ‘The Tyranny of Fun’ (2013) a commission for Birmingham Contemporary Music Group (nominated for a Royal Philharmonic Society Chamber-Scale Composition Award), ‘The Price of Curiosity’ (2019), a commission for the BBC Symphony Orchestra/Radio 3, and ‘Motet II’ (2020), a commission for Ensemble Télémaque, Marseille. Since 2004 he has taught composition at Guildhall School of Music & Drama, where his students have included Francisco Coll, Mica Levi and Oliver Leith.
This project, for leading British contemporary music label NMC Recordings, gathers together on one disc Richard’s orchestral and ensemble works, the first release solely dedicated to his music. Covering a span of 25 years, the works presented range in scale from ‘Crank’ – a tiny piece for Music Box written while a student of Louis Andriessen in The Hague – new recordings of three ensemble pieces completed for Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, the premiere recording of his orchestral work (conducted by Alpesh Chauhan), and the basset-clarinet concerto ‘Learning to Fly’, which first brought his name to wider attention when it was premiered by London Sinfonietta in 1998.