Paul Usher

The third piece on the programme was the world premiere of a string quartet by Paul Usher, born in London in 1971.The four-movement quartet, commissioned by the Audi cultural fund, made use of structures that were almost exclusively canonic and polyphonic, creating a highly complex impression and displaying a hectic, nervously flickering style of expression that incorporated brief, cliché-like motifs, fragments of sound, glissandi, and quarter-tone effects.

Particularly the swaying dance style of the second movement gave a convincing demonstration of how Usher was able to shape his exciting city music - in its fragmentation and displacements - into an enthralling whole, rich with associations.
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Paul Usher's "A Crypt for Christina", too, made a very strong impression with its almost romantic dreamlike quality.Usher draws very strongly on Bruckner, something that can be heard in the music's almost religious earnestness.
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Paul Usher's "A Crypt for Christina", a neo-romantically sparkling band of sound, dared to play with fragmented quotations from works by Schubert and Bruckner.
...
"Distant closeness" [the theme of the festival] could also refer to the way that - in Paul Usher's "A Crypt for Christina", for example - defamiliarised, concealed fragments of Bruckner, Schubert or Mahler seep into the present.And it could also stand for a concept of space in which sounds that seem to arrive from afar blend with those of the hall itself.

From [No reference]

String harmonics, above which the ethereal sounds of the woodwind grab the audience's attention, introduced the three movements of Paul Usher's A Crypt for Christina.
...
In his piece "A Crypt for Christina", the young London-based Paul Usher, whose music was being heard for the first time at Donaueschingen, is playing with memories, with the romantic tradition of unfinished pieces.For them and his sister Christina he has built a kind of musical mausoleum ...
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In his "Nancarrow Concerto", Paul Usher (born 1970) makes very direct reference to the composer who counts as one of the masters of 20th century music.
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To create this piece, Usher had referred to sketches of a pianola concerto made by Nancarrow in 1997[sic], the year of that composer's death.His theme here was the dichotomy between man and machine ...

From Wiesbadener Kurier

In his composition, the "Nancarrow Concerto for Pianola and Orchestra", Paul Usher considered Nancarrow's compositional technique as if through a magnifying glass.He allowed the speed to implode into units of matter, whose unpredictable dispersal across time was anything but banal in its effect.
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Usher Study for Pianola #33:

From Musicweb

After the wild applause had subsided somewhat, Irvine Arditti dryly acknowledged that the group has a reputation for playing the unplayable, and added, "now here is a piece that actually is unplayable", and then offered a sensational encore, Nancarrow's Study for Player Piano No. 33, arranged for string quartet by British composer Paul Usher.

Paul Usher

Paul Usher Composer [Paul Usher] / BMIC
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Paul Usher

'At the moment I think of writing music as about making connections- connections between the matter of individual movements, between movements themselves, between pieces and also between the music of others. I often begin with a few fragments? of my own, or another composers work? as a starting point. In recent years I have been drawn to unfinished things, as in the Nancarrow Concerto which is made from sketches and fragments of a Pianola Concerto by Nancarrow. I would like to create a sense of several things happening simultaneously, at the moment before they tip over into the perception of a single event.' Paul Usher

Born in Hackney, London in 1970, Paul studied guitar and piano at the Royal Academy of Music and composition at Kings College, London with David Lumsdaine and Nicola Lefanu.
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In 1999 Paul was given the Young Composers Award at the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival where the Arditti Quartet played short-listed works that year. Since then Paul has written two pieces for the Ardittis, and made arrangements of Nancarrow Studies for them, commissioned by Audi AG and West Deutscher Rundfunk.

Paul UsherComposer [Paul Usher] / BMIC
...
Paul Usher

'At the moment I think of writing music as about making connections— connections between the matter of individual movements, between movements themselves, between pieces and also between the music of others.I often begin with a few fragments? of my own, or another composers work? as a starting point.In recent years I have been drawn to unfinished things, as in the Nancarrow Concerto which is made from sketches and fragments of a Pianola Concerto by Nancarrow.I would like to create a sense of several things happening simultaneously, at the moment before they tip over into the perception of a single event.' Paul Usher

Born in Hackney, London in 1970, Paul studied guitar and piano at the Royal Academy of Music and composition at Kings College, London with David Lumsdaine and Nicola Lefanu.
...
In 1999 Paul was given the Young Composers Award at the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival where the Arditti Quartet played short-listed works that year.Since then Paul has written two pieces for the Ardittis, and made arrangements of Nancarrow Studies for them, commissioned by Audi AG and West Deutscher Rundfunk.
...
' ... Usher's A Crypt for Christina, whose concealed quotations yearn nostalgically for a world of unquestioned beauty.'

The third piece on the programme was the world premiere of a string quartet by Paul Usher, born in London in 1971.The four-movement quartet, commissioned by the Audi cultural fund, made use of structures that were almost exclusively canonic and polyphonic, creating a highly complex impression and displaying a hectic, nervously flickering style of expression that incorporated brief, cliché-like motifs, fragments of sound, glissandi, and quarter-tone effects.

Particularly the swaying dance style of the second movement gave a convincing demonstration of how Usher was able to shape his exciting city music - in its fragmentation and displacements - into an enthralling whole, rich with associations.
...
Paul Usher's "A Crypt for Christina", too, made a very strong impression with its almost romantic dreamlike quality.Usher draws very strongly on Bruckner, something that can be heard in the music's almost religious earnestness.
...
Paul Usher's "A Crypt for Christina", a neo-romantically sparkling band of sound, dared to play with fragmented quotations from works by Schubert and Bruckner.
...
"Distant closeness" [the theme of the festival] could also refer to the way that - in Paul Usher's "A Crypt for Christina", for example - defamiliarised, concealed fragments of Bruckner, Schubert or Mahler seep into the present.And it could also stand for a concept of space in which sounds that seem to arrive from afar blend with those of the hall itself.

From [No reference]

String harmonics, above which the ethereal sounds of the woodwind grab the audience's attention, introduced the three movements of Paul Usher's A Crypt for Christina.
...
In his piece "A Crypt for Christina", the young London-based Paul Usher, whose music was being heard for the first time at Donaueschingen, is playing with memories, with the romantic tradition of unfinished pieces.For them and his sister Christina he has built a kind of musical mausoleum ...
...
In his "Nancarrow Concerto", Paul Usher (born 1970) makes very direct reference to the composer who counts as one of the masters of 20th century music.
...
To create this piece, Usher had referred to sketches of a pianola concerto made by Nancarrow in 1997[sic], the year of that composer's death.His theme here was the dichotomy between man and machine ...

From Wiesbadener Kurier

In his composition, the "Nancarrow Concerto for Pianola and Orchestra", Paul Usher considered Nancarrow's compositional technique as if through a magnifying glass.He allowed the speed to implode into units of matter, whose unpredictable dispersal across time was anything but banal in its effect.

From [No reference]

It was the pianola, above all else, that made an impression with its sound - a mechanical piano that the American Conlon Nancarrow had discovered for himself during the last century, as flesh and blood musicians were simply too slow for his high-speed compositions.The young British composer Paul Usher, in his "Nancarrow Concerto", had interwoven the pianola with the orchestral sound of the Ensemble Modern, who played - even though they were merely flesh and blood musicians - with almost athletic virtuosity.

Nancarrow arr.Usher Study for Pianola #33:

From Musicweb

After the wild applause had subsided somewhat, Irvine Arditti dryly acknowledged that the group has a reputation for playing the unplayable, and added, "now here is a piece that actually is unplayable", and then offered a sensational encore, Nancarrow's Study for Player Piano No. 33, arranged for string quartet by British composer Paul Usher.

On Saturday 13 November 2004, the world premiere of Paul Usher's Nancarrow Concerto for Pianola and Ensemble was given in the concert hall of West German Radio in Cologne.
...
However, West German Radio (WDR) and Ensemble Modern jointly commissioned the young English composer, Paul Usher, who, with the blessing of Nancarrow's widow, Yoko Nancarrow, completed the work.
...
Usher examined and copied all Nancarrow's surviving sketches at the Paul Sacher-Stiftung in Basel, and, with a judicious sprinkling of his own imagination, created a stunning four movement work entitled Nancarrow Concerto, which goes far beyond any previous keyboard concerto in the complexity of sound and rhythm produced by the piano.
...
Rex Lawson, Paul Usher and Kasper de Roo drink a toast to the memory of Conlon Nancarrow, after the successful first performance of Nancarrow Concerto.

After the wild applause had subsided somewhat, Irvine Arditti dryly acknowledged that the group has a reputation for playing the unplayable, and added, ,now here is a piece that actually is unplayable,, and then offered a sensational encore, Nancarrow,s Study for Player Piano No. 33, arranged for string quartet by British composer Paul Usher.

Paul Usher's Nancarrow Concerto - November 2004 in Cologne
...
On Saturday 13 November 2004, the world premiere of Paul Usher's Nancarrow Concerto for Pianola and Ensemble was given in the concert hall of West German Radio in Cologne.
...
However, West German Radio (WDR) and Ensemble Modern jointly commissioned the young English composer, Paul Usher, who, with the blessing of Nancarrow's widow, Yoko Nancarrow, completed the work.
...
Usher examined and copied all Nancarrow's surviving sketches at the Paul Sacher-Stiftung in Basel, and, with a judicious sprinkling of his own imagination, created a stunning four movement work entitled Nancarrow Concerto, which goes far beyond any previous keyboard concerto in the complexity of sound and rhythm produced by the piano.
...
Rex Lawson, Paul Usher and Kasper de Roo drink a toast to the memory of Conlon Nancarrow, after the successful first performance of Nancarrow Concerto .

Now though, the English composer, Paul Usher, has reviewed all the sketches, and has completed a new work, entitled Nancarrow Concerto, for Pianola and instrumental ensemble, which was given its premiere in November 2004 in Cologne, Germany.