Rush Hour concert - Declan Hickey and Ellen Wilkinson - Guitar and Oboe

Declan and Ellen join us for a really exciting programme of 20th century music composed almost exclusively for the guitar and oboe.

It will include a World Premiere – Elisabeth Lutyens Déroulement, composed in 1980.  Lutyens, who died in 1983, lived in Chalk Farm so we can even claim her as a 'local'.

Because the score for Eleanor Alberga's Resolution is not publicly available (it exists only in manuscript) the piece is effectively never played - so although we can't claim a world premiere for it, we can rightly claim that the performance is very special.

In Tom Eastwood's Uirapurù the oboe plays the role of the titular Amazonian bird – the guitar is a hunter trying to capture it.

Declan will be using his 'new' 19th century guitar – one of its very first outings – for the Naploéon Coste's Le Montagnard.

But it will be back to a modern guitar for Oran Johnson's 'Woodcolours', a piece which was inspired by 'Radical Beauty', an exhibition at the Dulwich Picture Gallery of woodcuts by the abstract expressionist artist Helen Frankenthaler. 'The five short movements explore the relationship between the craft of shaping and colouring pieces of wood and the art of creating lines and colours out of the guitar.'

The doors will open at 6pm and we invite you to share a FREE glass of wine with us before the performance starts.

PROGRAMME:

Napoléon Coste (1805–1883) Le Montagnard, Op. 34

Elisabeth Lutyens (1906–83) Déroulement, Op. 145 (1980)

Oran Johnson (b. 1998) Woodcolours (solo guitar) (2022)

Eleanor Alberga (b. 1949) Resolution (1982)

Tom Eastwood (1922–1999) Uirapurù (1983)

TICKET 'PRICE':

Because we are not a public venue we cannot 'sell' tickets. Instead we ask you to make a donation (suggested minimum £15 per ticket). This will enable us to pay our musicians a reasonable fee.

THE ARTISTS:

DECLAN HICKEY:

Declan Hickey is a classical guitarist based in London. His specialisms include post-War and contemporary British guitar music, and European musical culture in the early 19th century.

He has performed at major UK venues and live on Radio 3. In 2023, he was twice invited to perform Harrison Birtwistle’s seldom-heard The World is Discovered with the London Sinfonietta. With violinist Eliza Nagle, he was a Young Artist of the International Guitar Foundation for the 2023–24 season. His other chamber partnerships include duos with recorder player Lizzie Knatt, guitarist Michael Matthews, and saxophonist Sophia Elger (the Tondo Duo).

Devoted to new music, Declan has worked closely with living composers and has played in a host of premieres include works by Oliver Rudland, Archie John, Declan Molloy, Jack Gionis, Toby Anderson, and Jonty Lefroy Watt.  As a member of the Cambridge Cohort for Guitar Research, he regularly delivers papers on historical musical subjects, and later this year will present on William Ball (c1784–1865) at the Guitar Foundation of America convention in Louisville, Kentucky.

ELLEN WILKINSON:

Ellen Wilkinson is an oboist, arts educator and writer who graduated from the Royal Academy of Music (RAM) in 2023. On graduation, she received the Irene Burcher Woodwind Prize for the highest mark in an undergraduate woodwind final recital.  Ellen’s performance highlights include engagements with the Kuwaiti-British Orchestra, the Dorset Opera Festival, the Hastings Philharmonic Orchestra, the Odyssey Festival Orchestra and the Riot Ensemble, as well as playing cor anglais in Mahler’s 3rd Symphony at the Royal Festival Hall with the RAM Symphony Orchestra, under Semyon Bychkov.

In 2024, Ellen completed the Open Academy Fellowship with the RAM, where she developed skills in community and participation work, partaking in projects in collaboration with the Wigmore Hall, as well as in a care home, primary school and on an adolescent psychiatric ward. Ellen has worked as the online oboe tutor for the Antigua and Barbuda Youth Symphony Orchestra (ABYSO) for three years, in partnership with the Commonwealth Resounds Charity, and has visited Antigua three times to work as a woodwind coach for the ABYSO’s summer orchestral project.

Ellen has several wider creative interests, and in her first year at RAM set up the conservatoire’s student newspaper, RAMpage News, which led on to work writing theatre and classical music reviews, as well as blog and website content for arts organisations and classical music festivals, such as the Odyssey Festival Orchestra and the Barnes Music Festival. She also completed the 2024 Almeida Theatre’s Young Producer’s Scheme.