As part of our commitment to new music we will be spending a couple of days in August recording pieces by Mark Browse.
Mark grew up in Kent and studied at St Peter’s College, Oxford, where he read Modern Languages. From an early age Mark has been involved in choral music of all kinds, and he is active as a singer and conductor as well as a composer. His music has been performed in the UK, the USA and Europe, by many different groups, including Horsham Chamber Choir, the English Arts Chorale and the Bournemouth Symphony Chorus (for whom Mark composed When Music Sounds, one of the tracks to be included on the CD).
The choral pieces on the new album are all relatively short and self-contained, but Mark has also written larger-scale works, including an opera, Margaret of Antioch, and an oratorio, The Mysteries of Joy. He has also written purely instrumental works, such as Five Variations on Pange Lingua, which won first prize in the 2017-18 New Music Competition run by the Yorkshire Late Starters Strings and judged by Dame Judith Weir.
“Mark’s piece soon drew me in completely, in particular with its substantial, dark conclusion… The strong music and sincere playing had an intense effect on me.”
Former Master of the King’s Music Dame Judith Weir, writing about ‘Five Variations on Pange Lingua‘