Morris Pert returns to London

So,finally,after several postponements/delays and the overbearing occurrence of the Jubilympics, I managed to take the music of Morris Pert back to the city where he worked for almost 20 years, and indeed where much of his best work was done. Schott's is an old school music shop and a remnant of the musical London Morris would have known. A couple of evenings most weeks, the Steinway emerges from one of the practice rooms, and the basement becomes a performance venue, the music able to resonate through the open ceiling and around the ground floor of the shop: an ideal venue for Morris' sonorous and atmospheric piano writing. Alongside the "Stones" Suite(2007), and excerpts from Sonores(written exactly 40 years previously in October 1973) and "Voyage in Space"(also London era),the programme included pieces from the ever-evolving Pert Piano Project: no less than 4 of the contributing composers being represented,with 2 World and one English premiere. Indeed,Edinburgh native Michael Bonaventure was present to hear his "Green Odyssey" come to life. To my mind it bears a similar relation to Pert's music as Takemitsu's Rain Tree Sketch 2 does to that of Messiaen: it represents a real communion between the two composers. In addition to the first two PPP works, Geoff Hannan's "The LIttle Cloud",and Iain Matheson's "Drosten", the opening two(of seven) parts of "The Magical Control of Rain" by Marc Yeats(who suggested the project in the first place) entered the realm of performed sound.I look forward to learning further movements from this major 50min cycle, and indeed the upcoming recording of the whole by Pierre-Arnaud Dablemont,who is ideally prepared for such an undertaking, having already recorded the similarly aquatic Gaspard de la Nuit. Playing in London for the first time since the 1980s was quite an experience: I keenly anticipate returning with more of Morris' music, hopefully in a matter of months.