WELCOME!
Stuart MacRae is an award-winning composer
of opera, orchestral, chamber and vocal music
Latest news
News
Performances coming up
Performances coming up
LATEST
Prometheus Symphony has been shortlisted for the Ivors Composer Awards 2020 in the Chamber Orchestral category. Winners will be announced on BBC Radio 3 on 1st December.
On 5th November 2020 violinist Fenella Humphreys staged a marathon 4.5-hour performance from her living room in which she played Variation on Caprice 24 approx. 165 times! This was to highlight the disparity between the value listeners place on music and the extremely low values paid out in royalties by online streaming companies. You can view the whole performance, or any part of it, and donate here
Anthropocene has WON the Large Scale New Work category
(sponsored by PRS for Music) in the Scottish Awards for New Music
Anthropocene has been shortlisted in the World Premiere category in the International Opera Awards! The winner will be announced at the ceremony on 4th May 2020.
The Dunedin Consort premiered Courante at the BBC Proms on 11th September 2019. The piece is an introduction to Bach's Orchestral Suite No.3, and is one of 4 specially commissioned pieces for this Prom.
The BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, with conductor Matthew Halls, soprano Jenni France and baritone Paul Carey Jones premiered Prometheus Symphony at the Lammermuir Festival. This 30-minute piece is the culmination of a series of works based on the Prometheus myth during my time as Composer in Association with the Lammermuir Festival, and sets texts by Aeschylus (trans. Elizabeth Barrett Browning and the composer) and Goethe.
ANTHROPOCENE
Anthropocene premieres on Operavision.eu
From 17th May until 16th November 2019
Scottish Opera premiered the latest opera by Stuart MacRae and Louise Welsh in January 2019. Set on a ship in an Arctic fjord, the opera is a mystery-thriller directed by Matthew Richardson with designs by Samal Blak.
'Icily resonant tale with a remorseless grip...' ★★★★
'Gripping music theatre.' ★★★★ The Times
https://www.scottishopera.org.uk/shows/anthropocene/
Anthropocene will receive a new production at Salzburger Landestheater in the 20/21 season, directed by Agnessa Nefjodov and conducted by Leslie Suganandarajah. Details here
Piano Sonata No.2 shortlisted for the Dorico Award in the Scottish Awards for New Music
View/listen here
buy the score (pdf) here
OUT NOW on Delphian Records - Cantata for Soloists, Choir and Lyre, with the Choir of Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge, Geoffrey Webber (cond.) and Bill Taylor (lyre)
The Devil Inside was shortlisted for the Achievement in Opera award at the 2016 UK Theatre Awards and the inaugural Sunday Herald Culture Awards
Performances coming up
Performances coming up
Performances coming up
Anthropocene
Salzburger Landestheater (new production)
Dir. Agnessa Nefjodov, Cond. Leslie Suganandarajah
dates tbc in 20/21 season
https://www.salzburger-landestheater.at/de/produktionen/anthropozaen-2.html?m=380
Recent
Performances coming up
Recent
Variation on Caprice 24
Fenella Humphreys (violin)
4.5-hour loop performance
MOBOFCROWS
Sarah Watts (contrabass clarinet)
Sound Festival, Abedeen
24th October 2020, 8pm
draw the veil (WP)
Rolf Hind (piano)
King's Place, London
7th October 2020, 6.30pm
Variation on Caprice 24 (WP)
Fenella Humphreys (violin)
Fidelio Orchestra Cafe
5th March 2020 7.00pm
https://fideliorchestra.art/whats-on/fenella-humphreys-and-louise-mcmonagie
About Stuart
Biography
Born in Inverness in 1976, Stuart MacRae has established himself as one of the most distinctive composers working today, writing music of elemental power and emotional subtlety. His works include a Violin Concerto (2001), Hamartia for cello and ensemble (2004), and Gaudete for soprano and orchestra (2008), all of which have been performed at the BBC Proms. Works for the stage include the dance-opera Echo and Narcissus (2007) and the opera Ghost Patrol (2012), a collaboration with writer Louise Welsh for Scottish Opera and Music Theatre Wales, which won the 2013 South Bank Sky Arts Award for Opera and was shortlisted for an Olivier Award.
Stuart’s music has been performed at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden and the Edinburgh International Festival, and by ensembles including the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, Scottish Ensemble, Hebrides Ensemble, BCMG and London Sinfonietta, as well as numerous orchestras. Stuart was Composer in Association with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra from 1999 to 2003. He was resident composer at the Spannungen Kammermusikfest in Heimbach, Germany in 2003, and Edinburgh Festival Creative Fellow at the University of Edinburgh from 2005 to 2006. From 2006 to 2007 he was a resident composer at Internationales Künstlerhaus Villa Concordia in Bamberg, Germany.
Recent projects include the opera The Devil Inside, written for Music Theatre Wales and Scottish Opera, Cantata, for the Choir of Gonville and Caius College Cambridge, and a series of works based on the Prometheus myth for the Lammermuir Festival.