Please click on a box above to view titles

Crossing the Bridge
Crossing the Bridge ThumbnailCrossing the Bridge Thumbnail

Cecilia McDowall

Crossing the Bridge

  • £24.75

Quantity:  

  • Product Details
  • Composer Biog
  • Instrumentation

Instrument: 8 or 10 flutes (score and parts)
Grade: slightly difficult
Catalogue No: 3705
ISMN No: 9790570278442

The work is scored for piccolo, 4 flutes in C, 2 alto flutes and bass flute. The score includes optional parts for both the contra bass and contra alto flutes.

Crossing the Bridge is a work for flute choir in three movements which are all to do with different bridges: Mostar, London Bridge and Brooklyn Bridge. Each movement captures a different quality – Mostar, with its middle European folk feel and falling phrases; London Bridge, a playful, fragmented presentation of the well known, London bridge is falling down; and Brooklyn Bridge, an energetic, high octane work, bringing the whole work of 11 minutes to an upbeat finish. The title, Crossing the Bridge, comes from a Haiku by the Scottish poet Alan Spence:
Crossing the bridge -
the other side
is lost in mist.

The work was commissioned by the National Flute Orchestra with financial support from the Birmingham Flute Commission, the British Flute Society, the Birmingham Flute Choir and Phoenix Flutes (Didcot) and individual sponsors. The first performance was given by the National Flute Orchestra, conductor Kenneth Bell, on 27 February 2011 at the Birmingham Conservatoire, England. The work is dedicated to four of the leading flautists and teachers who had a great impact on British flute playing in the twentieth century - Geoffrey Gilbert, Gareth Morris, John Francis and Harold Clarke (Cecilia's father).

... Mov 1 - Mostar • Mov 2 - London Bridge - Crossing to America • Mov 3 - Brooklyn Bridge
Cecilia McDowall
Cecilia McDowall is fast becoming one of Britain's most popular and frequently performed composers. Her wide experience in performing, teaching and composing has enabled the formulation of a uniquely original style that speaks directly to listeners, instrumentalists and singers alike.

Born in London in 1951, she read music at Edinburgh and London University and continued her studies at Trinity College of Music in London. She studied composition with Joseph Horovitz, Robert Saxton and Adam Gorb and has won several major composition awards.

She has received many commissions which include those from London Musici, London Mozart Players, Presteigne Festival of Music and the Arts, the trumpeter, Paul Archibald, flautist, Susan Milan, Fibonacci Sequence and Ensemble Lumière.

Her music has been widely performed throughout the United Kingdom and abroad, and at a variety of festivals including Deal, Presteigne, Hampstead and Highgate, Music Past and Present and at Dartington International Summer School. Her works are regularly broadcast on BBC Radio and Television.

She has written a number of works for brass, including a trumpet concerto, Seraphim, a trumpet and piano duo, The Night Trumpeter and a brass dectet, Salon Argentina.

Premières in 2004 have included Dancing Fish for saxophonist Sarah Field and the Brontë String Quartet, a string quartet, The case of the unanswered wire, for the Sorrel Quartet at the Presteigne Festival and a chorus and orchestra setting of the Stabat Mater for the St Albans Choral Society. A CD of her choral music was released in October, 2004, on the Dutton Epoch label.
Instrumentation Sample

You Also Viewed