| ![]()
photo: la Maison communale de Plainpalais, Geneva CH, Nov. 2018 (copyright: Nicolas Masson 2018)
| ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ |
| Thomas Meadowcroft is a freelance composer who makes music for the concert hall, theatre and radio. His work has been described as “reaching an inexpressible purity” (Le Monde), “dreamy post-rock” (The New York Times), “never-ending, sugar-sweet” (Neue Zürcher Zeitung), “hauntingly beautiful” (The Sydney Morning Herald), and “motorized nostalgia” (The Scotsman, Glasgow). Thomas’ orchestral music has been performed by, among others, the BBC Symphony Orchestra and the SWR Symphony Orchestra, his choral music by Der Mädchenchor der Sing-Akademie zu Berlin. His chamber music has been performed by, among others, ensemble recherche, Eklekto Percussion Collective, members of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Solistenensemble Kaleidoskop, Speak Percussion, and Yarn/Wire. His music has been presented at various international festivals and concert series including Carnegie Hall, the Chamber Music Society of the Lincoln Center, Lucerne Festival and Maerzmusik Berlin. Portrait concerts of his music have been given at, among others, Iwaki Auditorium Melbourne, and Miller Theatre NYC. Australian by birth, he has lived in Berlin since 1998. To cite the writer Paul Griffiths, 'it is the resulting distance of the country of the composer's birth that informs several of his projects, in which memory is coming at us from several different removes'. This is evidenced, for example, in his three radio plays for German radio, Song Buslines, Moving Homes, and Talkback Burnback, fictional music soundscapes set in regional Australia; as well as in the sound installation for QAGOMA, Monaro Eden, which features recordings of cousin Peter's V8 hotrod. Along with examining aspects of cultural memory in regional Australia, Meadowcroft's music addresses the political economy of music as part of each work's realization. The News in Music, for live symphony orchestra, examines TV news music and orchestral media in the service of power, whereas Die Kinder über dem Informationsmeer (Children over a Sea of Information), for children's choir and string orchestra, sees children reciting texts culled from YouTube user threads, while accompanied by chamber pop string arrangements. Another Children’s Television sees the live presentation of recordings of lost 1970’s library music for public-funded children’s television programs. As performer, he as performed at various festivals and series, including Issue Project Room, Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival and the Pavilion at die Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz. In 2015 he made orchestral arrangements of the music of Dirk von Lowtzow for the German Film Orchestra Babelsberg, as part of the opera, Von einem, der auszog..., by René Pollesch. His music has been released on Mode Records, New York. (current to May 2022) ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ |
MEDIA | 15.11.22 Members of the St Louis Symphony Orchestra play More Beautiful Discourse MORE INFO ![]()
photo: Pulitzer Arts Foundation, St Louis USA, November 2022 (copyright: Virginia Harold 2022) | _________________________ 14.10.22 SWR Big Band and SWR SO (cond. Pascal Rophé) play Forever Turnarounds MORE INFO ![]() _________________________ 13.10.22 NMZ Media report on Forever Turnarounds MORE INFO _________________________ 21.04.22 'Yarn/Wire' play Forward Through Circles and Another Children's Television MORE INFO ![]()
photo: Miller Theater, New York City USA, April 2022 (copyright: Rob Davidson 2022) | _________________________ 14.04.2022 Nathan Gathenby plays Rolando Continuo MORE INFO _________________________ 10.11.2021 'Yarn/Wire' play Walkman Antiquarian MORE INFO _________________________ 20.10.2021 'ensemble recherche' play More Beautiful Discourse MORE INFO _________________________ 08.10.2021 Talkback Burnback MORE INFO "Yeah. Back at homebase and closing, George. / Nah mate, i’m ![]()
_________________________ | 01.02.2021 Recording of Medieval Rococo by Ensemble Offspring MORE INFO _________________________ 29.11.2020 Essay: 'On John Williams - Live in Vienna' MORE INFO _________________________ 31.07.2020 Recording of March Static by Eugene Ughetti (feat. Claire Chase) MORE INFO ![]() _________________________ 25.06.2020 Mode Records Disc MORE INFO ![]() _________________________ 23.04.2018 Ensemble Offspring play Medieval Rococo MORE INFO _________________________ 23.04.2018 Radio feature on The News in Music MORE INFO ![]() _________________________ 30.01.2018 Essay: 'Le Sacre du Primetime' MORE INFO _________________________ 29.11.2017 Jess Tsang and Rob Cosgrove play Cradles MORE INFO _________________________ 20.10.2017 SWR SO (cond. Ilan Volkov) play The News in Music MORE INFO "...cheap entertainment music. And then when somebody shows up like a village idiot, whose The News in Music is a US-American modelled news music strung together in a Hollywood-like manner, then it hails in a concert of 'boos'. (Badische Zeitung) "His collage of film music soundtracks and news jingles is really super dull." (Bavarian Radio Classic) "If (the composer) had sold each individual scrap to television companies, he would be a millionaire." (Musiktexte) "A strange brew, that hardly gives satirical sharpness to worldly turmoil, so that the ending itself only looks just as bad in contrast." (Neue Musik Zeitung) "A scrawled, film music lament about the phenomenon of fake news... more critical radio play than composition." (Neue Zuercher Zeitung) "The piece still fits into the trend of new accessibility." (Osnabruecker Zeitung) "Would it not have been better to make a radio piece out of it? After five minutes everybody gets it. What comes in the next fifteen minutes afterwards is diffident annoyance." (Schweizer Musikzeitung) "It's a scandal that not more people were outraged." (Stuttgarter Zeitung) _________________________ 20.10.2017 interview about The News in Music MORE INFO _________________________ 24.05.2016 'Yarn/Wire' play Walkman Antiquarian MORE INFO _________________________ 04.03.2016 Moving Homes MORE INFO "Severe tropical cyclones may lead to the breakdown of civil ![]()
_________________________ | 01.05.2015 string arrangements, 'Tocotronic' MORE INFO _________________________ 30.08.2013 Song Buslines MORE INFO ![]()
_________________________ | 25.05.2013 'Speak Percussion' play Cradles MORE INFO _________________________ 19.04.2010 string arrangements, 'Tocotronic' MORE INFO ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ |
CONTACT | Thomas Meadowcroft: t[dot]meadowcroft[at]web[dot]de Or Philippa Allan (Real Arts): pa[at]realarts[dot]eu ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ |
IMPRESSUM | Inhaltlich Verantwortlicher gemS§ ¤ 55 Abs. 2 RStV: Thomas Meadowcroft. / Haftungshinweis: Trotz sorgfaeltiger inhaltlicher Kontrolle uebernehmen wir keine Haftung fuer die Inhalte externer Links. Fuer den Inhalt der verlinkten Seiten sind ausschlie§lich deren Betreiber verantwortlich. Inhalt und Struktur sind urheberrechtlich geschuetzt. Die Vervielfaeltigung von Informationen oder Daten, insbesondere die Verwendung von Texten, Textteilen oder Bildmaterial bedarf der vorherigen Zustimmung. 2022 |