Kate Whitley - Video

To coincide with the release of her NMC debut disc I Am I Say (NMC D229), BBT cameras were on hand to film the final recording sessions and interview BBT Special Award winner 2014 Kate Whitley about how she planned the repertoire for the disc.  Featuring her as both composer and performer, it has allowed her to fulfil a desire to encompass so many aspects of her musical output – with children’s choirs, her Multi-Story Orchestra, instrumentalists, librettists and friends – all brought together in this one project.

On 25 February 2015 BBT award and fellowship winners, pianist Kate Whitley and guitarist Sean Shibe opened a five-month-long concert series at London’s exquisite Wilton’s Music Hall.  BBT film-maker Graham Johnston was on hand to record their impressions and plans in being presented with a carte blanche to programme whatever they wanted.  They shared the stage in the Main Hall, but from March Sean will lead BBT artists in inaugurating the newly reclaimed cocktail bar upstairs for an evening of intimate music making.

Kate Whitley opens BBT Wednesdays at Wilton’s concert series, 25 February 2015, with her own Five Piano Pieces in the main hall of Wilton’s Music Hall, London.  Kate writes: “I started playing the piano when I was four or five, and started composing when I was about sixteen. After writing a few early piano pieces (which I’d probably be very embarrassed by if I re-discovered them now), I didn’t write anything for solo piano for years. I decided to try again last year, and arranged these tiny sketches for piano. They are very gestural and fragmented, like a lot of my music. Each of them focuses on an obsession with a single note or idea.”