John's college

To play this composer's oboe concerto, you will require, among more regular items of percussionry (such as the waterphone and lion's roar): 10 'or so' tin cans, 5 scaffolding bars, 4 car wheels, 2 spring coils and and oxygen cylinder. And they're letting him loose on Dartington?!



Actually, the appointment, from 2011, of John Woolrich as artistic director for the next three years of the 60+ years old summer school and festival could be a stroke of genius. Dartington is nothing if not eclectic. So who better to take over the reins than the classical music's foremost Selecta. Over the years, his concert programmes (he has been closely involved with Britten Sinfonia and is associate artistic director at the Aldeburgh Festival) have become renowned for their intelligent mixing of old and new, familiar and unfamiliar. Always he puts the focus on the qualities of individual pieces, which the audience can inspect as if they were curious samples picked out from a larger, less defined musical landscape.

It's the same in his own music, which might draw inspiration from Monteverdi (eg the short piece for viola and strings, Ulysses Awakes) or surrealist art (The Elephant from Celebes) - as well as the local builders' merchant.