Thea joins Chamber Music America in exclusive composer conversation

In celebration of National Chamber Music Month, Chamber Music America is hosting "Unity in Action: The Strength of Working Together" on May 18 in New York City, an afternoon of dialogue, discovery, and community. The event will bring together composers, performers, and industry leaders to exchange ideas, honor a mosaic of artistic perspectives, and explore models of collaboration. Hosted at St Peter’s Church in Midtown Manhattan, you can rsvp for the event at the link below.

The day begins at 1.30pm with a brief welcome, before Thea speaks to Chamber Music America’s CEO Kevin Kwan Loucks for an hour long discussion. The talk will be focussed on Thea’s lifelong career in music and her achievements having composed some of the most significant pieces of contemporary chamber music.

The day continues with several other fascinating talks and a mixer in the evening for the New York based CMA community.

Find out more about the event and RSVP here.

BBC Proms to feature premiere of musgrave’s Bassoon concerto

The BBC Proms returns to the UK this summer with as exciting and varied a program as we have come to expect from the festival. Between plenty of the classics, celebrations of musical legends from Marvin Gaye to Morton Feldman, rock highlights from psych- to Turkish-folk-, there is still room for plenty of new BBC commissions, including Thea’s brand new Bassoon Concerto.

On Sunday, August 23rd, conductor Benjamin Marquise Gilmore and the Academy of St Martin-in-the-Fields spotlight the French horn and bassoon in two concertos: one classic, one contemporary. With virtuoso bassoonist Amy Harman they will perform the World Premiere of Thea’s concerto, programmed alongside Mozart’s good-natured Horn Concerto No. 3, featuring soloist Felix Kleisner, Britten’s playful Simple Symphony, Elgar’s Romance for bassoon and orchestra and finally Mozart’s Symphony No. 35 in D major, ‘Haffner’.

Find out more here and be sure to check out the rest of the festival’s program.

Phoenix Rising Received warmly in London and Bristol

Last week the LSO and Maestro Antonio Pappano performed Thea’s 1997 work Phoenix Rising in London and Bristol in performances which have gone down a treat with the UK audiences. Get a snapshot of the performances and a summary of reviews we’ve spotted here!

In a little over 20 minutes it enacts a journey from darkness to light, from turbulence to peace: the disruptive timpanist (shades of Nielsen’s Fourth) and four percussionists batter away at drums of various sizes, transferring – as the phoenix rose – to mostly tuned percussion and sounds of the utmost delicacy. There was a theatrical element, decorous rather than dramatic: the hero (the principal horn) began offstage, while the villain (the timpanist) ruled the roost; when the horn appeared on the stage the rest of his section stood (a briefly Mahlerian moment); and as he joined them the timpanist retreated offstage the other side of the platform, his distant drums reduced to a desultory muttering.

Musgrave’s music is never less than interesting, and often compelling, as it moves from jarring dissonance via romantic intensity to shimmering calm. It is skilfully written – even in the loudest passages we could always hear what the strings were doing – and there were telling solos for flute and piccolo, cor anglais and contrabassoon, violin and cello. Timpanist, percussionists and solo horn – virtuosos all – richly deserved their ovations.

Chris Kettle - Seen and Heard International
15/12/2025

A 23-minute rollercoaster, it pits a blackguardly timpanist and his stick-wielding allies against a devil-may-care hornist and his brassy backup band…
…Pappano and the London Symphony Orchestra gave it a thorough workout with marimba, vibraphone, glockenspiel, xylophone and tubular bells creating a magical aura. The musicians certainly revelled in its prickly harmonies, though the theatrical elements might have been pushed further.

Clive Paget - The Guardian
13/12/2025

Phoenix Rising is one of Thea Musgrave’s most electrifying and adventurous scores, blazing an incandescent trail at the start of this concert of British music.

The Hackney Gazette

Chicago classical review of Piccolo play at the cso

Last weekend (October 3-4) brought a fantastic performance of Thea’s Piccolo Play, performed by piccolo soloist Jennifer Gunn with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and their conductor Daniela Candillari. Read an exerpt from Tim Sawyier’s review for the Chicago Classical Review below, and find the full article here.

The first half closed with the first CSO performances of Thea Musgrave’s Piccolo Play. Originally composed in 1989 for piccolo and piano, Musgrave revised the work in 2022 with string accompaniment for the 50th anniversary of the National Flute Association. CSO piccolo Jennifer Gunn premiered this new version with the Chicago Philharmonic at the 50th NFA Convention in Chicago that year, and was again the soloist for its first CSO subscription performances.

Piccolo Play unfolds in seven brief movements, each named after a Couperin harpsichord piece. The solo piccolo weaves enchanting melodic minor lines in “L’Enchanteresse” (The Enchantress) and makes ranine bounds in “L’Amphibie” (The Frog). Each movement has an aphoristic quality, and a pointillist texture prevails in the central ones. Gunn’s stern piping vividly depicted “Le Bruit de Guerre” (The Noise of War) and she was unphased by the technical demands of the final breakneck “Le Turbulent” (The Turbulent One).

Gunn is a true virtuoso of her instrument, more at ease in a soloist role than many orchestral players. Her pure, well-projected tone was always in the service of Musgrave’s condensed expression and made a compelling case for the piccolo as a concertante instrument. 

- Tim Sawyier - October 4, 2025

Photo: Todd Rosenberg