News

• Llyr Williams wins South Bank Sky Arts Award
• Current graduate student Marc Lewon has just brought out a CD with his Ensemble Leones:
• English Musical Vernaculars Study Day at Oxford, Friday 11 May
• New College and the Faculty of Music host Joseph Volpe as Humanitas Chair of Opera
• Professor Elizabeth Eva Leach wins Renaissance Society of America Prize

David Maw wins improvisation prize

David Maw was awarded the second prize in Improvisation at the 10th International Organ Competition of Biarritz, hosted by the Academie Andre Marchal, the week before last. David reports:

The competition hosted by the Academie Andre Marchal is held every two years and offers separate prizes for interpretation and for improvisation. As regards the improvisation competition, six competitors (representing four countries) made it through preselection to the semi-final. We had to improvise a triptych on plainchant themes and variations on a Basque melody. There were three of us in the final, a Frenchman, Dutchman and me. We had to improvise a free improvisation on themes that had been at one time or other submitted to Andre Marchal (in this case the themes chosen were by Benjamin Britten and George Dyson) and a musical illustration of a narrative text (on this occasion, the life of St Martin - the final was held at the church of St Martin in Biarritz). The jury of five contained American, German and French organists and was chaired by Francois Sabatier.