Friday Night Dialogues: Tales of a composer
Composer Julian Grant will speak at the next Friday Night Dialogues at the library.
Between January and October in 1828 two men from Edinburgh, William Burke and William Hare, taking advantage of a shortage of cadavers to be supplied for medical school dissection, systematically murdered 16 people, receiving a premium sum for each of their victims. In 1871 poet Edward Lear, as part of his compilation “Nonsense Songs, Stories, Botany and Alphabets,” wrote the “The Owl and the Pussycat,” which became a popular children’s rhyme. How are these two events, one of such a grisly nature and one of such whimsy, related?
In a word, musically!
The prodigious output of composer Julian Grant has included operas, orchestral and chamber music, and vocal and children’s works over the course of a career spanning five decades. “The Owl and the Pussycat” was set to music in 2003, and the chamber opera “The Nefarious, Immoral but Highly Profitable Enterprise of Mr. Burke & Mr. Hare,” premiered in Boston in November of 2017.
What are the distinctive demands and the continuum between these two audiences? How does the creative process vary? Mr. Grant will cover these subjects and more at what promises to be an engaging and highly entertaining discussion at the Shelter Island Library’s Friday Night Dialogues on August 17.
Julian Grant was born in London, England, and educated at Chichester High School for Boys and Bristol University. In 1985 he won a British Arts Council scholarship to attend the Music Theatre Studio Ensemble at Banff, Alberta, Canada. He has freelanced for, among others, the Northern Ballet Theatre, working closely with Christopher Gable on new performing versions of Prokofiev’s “Romeo and Juliet,” and Tchaikovsky’s “Swan Lake,” and extensive education work with the London opera houses, notably English National Opera’s Russian Tour in 1990.
On return to London he became Music Director of St. Paul’s Girls’ School from 2002 to 2007. During his tenure there he wrote pieces for the school, including a multi-media celebration of the school’s centenary in 2004. He worked for the Birmingham and Scottish Operas, and wrote articles for the musical press, notably on opera and Russian music. In July 2012 his opera-ballet “Hot House,” a commission for London’s Cultural Olympiad, premiered at the Royal Opera House, London. Since 2010 he has lived in Princeton, New Jersey and New York.
Learn more about the prolific career of composer Julian Grant at Friday Night Dialogues at 7 p.m. on August 17 in the Library Community Room. There is no charge for this event but donations are gratefully accepted.
Up next: On Friday, August 31 at 7 p.m., Terry and Kathy Brockbank will bring a staged reading of “The Guys,” a play by Anne Nelson.
