Eleanor Alberga
The Jamaican-born composer Eleanor Alberga is featured at AfriClassical.com
We talk to the composer about being commissioned for the Last Night of the Proms
Born in 1949 in Kingston, Jamaica, composer Eleanor Alberga began her
musical training at the age of five when she decided to become a
concert pianist. Her studies led her to the Royal Academy of Music in
1970, and later to the London Contemporary Dance Theatre, where she
became music director. We talk to her about working with musicians,
revising compositions, and musical influences. On Saturday 12 September,
her choral work Arise Athena! will receive its world premiere at the Last Night of the Proms. We ask her a little about it…
Arise Athena! was commissioned especially for the BBC Proms. Have you written for the Proms before?
No I haven’t, but I have been asked before to do something at the Proms
and it just wasn’t the right time. I was too busy! But this year
everything seemed to work out.
And you’ve gone in right at the top, at the Last Night…
That’s right. I’m looking forward to working with [conductor] Marin
Alsop, because I know she has been interested in my work and has
approached me for things in the past, but this is the first time I’ve
managed to work with her.
Have you involved yourself in any of the rehearsals for it?
They don’t rehearse until the actual week of the concert. I’ll probably
go along to rehearsals three days before the concert. I like to give
wonderful musicians and conductors like the BBC Symphony Orchestra and
Marin a free rein. If there are any comments that need to be made then I
will make them, but the idea is to make music for other people to
interpret in their own way.
Arise, Athena! is a striking title. Tell us a little bit about the piece.
It’s for orchestra and chorus, and the organ is used as well - I
thought I might as well make use of it if I’ve got it! The piece itself
is about three minutes long, which was very tough - a lot of the time
spent on it towards the end was cutting it down because it wanted to be a
much bigger piece. But I have written short pieces before. I have a
string quartet which is about five minutes long and my pieces for the
ABRSM exams are short pieces: two, three minutes long. But, when given
the chance to work with huge forces like a symphony orchestra, one would
like to explore it for a longer time!
Does Arise, Athena! sound like the rest of your body of work, or have you gone in a different direction to celebrate the atmosphere of the evening?
That’s a very good question. I have gone in a slightly different
direction, though it’s difficult to explain. I have a very light side of
music that I write which is tonal and rhythmic and can have more
obviously African and Caribbean influences. I wasn’t going to do that
for the Proms, but I also couldn’t go completely the other way. So I
have used a more tonal brushstroke than I would normally with a
20-minute piece for a huge orchestra - because it’s a party night, I
thought that it has to be accessible to a large number of people from
all different walks of life.
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