Tenor Christopher Bowen and guitarist Matthew Marshall perform Eden Rock at venues in New Zealand prior to a studio recording for a CD to be released early in 2026

New Zealand tenor Christopher Bowen returns from Europe where he sings opera, oratorio and choral music. His varied career has seen him perform across the world including at La Scala, Carnegie Hall, The Proms at the Albert Hall in London and the coronation of King Charles III. Matthew Marshall is one of NZ’s leading classical guitarists having given over 2000 performances on four continents. Together they give a varied programme featuring my 2026 song cycle Eden Rock - a work originally commissioned by the BBC based on poems by Charles Causley, one of the UK’s most eloquent and thoughtful writers.

Tenor Christopher Bowen and guitarist Matthew Marshall perform Eden Rock at venues in New Zealand prior to a studio recording for a CD to be released early in 2026

New Zealand tenor Christopher Bowen returns from Europe where he sings opera, oratorio and choral music. His varied career has seen him perform across the world including at La Scala, Carnegie Hall, The Proms at the Albert Hall in London and the coronation of King Charles III. Matthew Marshall is one of NZ’s leading classical guitarists having given over 2000 performances on four continents. Together they give a varied programme featuring my 2026 song cycle Eden Rock - a work originally commissioned by the BBC based on poems by Charles Causley, one of the UK’s most eloquent and thoughtful writers.

25th April sees the premiere of Monsters, the long awaited sequel to Ghosts and a major addition to the wind orchestra repertory

Commissioned by the Central Band of the RAF and the US Airforce Bands, Monsters is inspired by the Gardens of Bomarzo near Orvieto in Italy.

The Garden of Bomarzo near Rome were created by Duke Pier Francesco Orsini, patron of the arts who commissioned the bizarre sculptures starting in 1547.  Hidden in a wooded valley, the figures became forgotten and neglected for centuries until brought to wider attention again by surrealist Salvador Dali in 1938.  These nine movements depict both the romance and strangeness of the garden and sculptures hewn out the volcanic rock, and offer a musical glimpse into a fantastic world hidden for so long.

Monsters will also be performed at Sherborne Summer School of Music in August when Stephen McNeff will be Composer in Residence

25th April sees the premiere of Monsters, the long awaited sequel to Ghosts and a major addition to the wind orchestra repertory

Commissioned by the Central Band of the RAF and the US Airforce Bands, Monsters is inspired by the Gardens of Bomarzo near Orvieto in Italy.

The Garden of Bomarzo near Rome were created by Duke Pier Francesco Orsini, patron of the arts who commissioned the bizarre sculptures starting in 1547.  Hidden in a wooded valley, the figures became forgotten and neglected for centuries until brought to wider attention again by surrealist Salvador Dali in 1938.  These nine movements depict both the romance and strangeness of the garden and sculptures hewn out the volcanic rock, and offer a musical glimpse into a fantastic world hidden for so long.

Monsters will also be performed at Sherborne Summer School of Music in August when Stephen McNeff will be Composer in Residence

The Lambeth Wind Orchestra perform The Winged Lion - a Symphony of Venice - in Holy Spirit Church, Clapham in a programme that includes Gershwin and Holst

For further details visit the LWO website here https://www.lambethwindorchestra.org.uk

“Not short on colour, flamboyant flourish, contrast, reflection, passion and celebration, he explores the darker Machiavellian side [of Venice]: the hidden face behind the mask and the dungeons deep beneath the Doge’s palace across the Bridge of Sighs” (Guy Woolfenden, Winds) McNeff’s five movement homage to the City of the Winged Lion will extend some community bands but the rewards and delights far outweigh the challenge. A very important piece.

Giles Easterbrook

The Winged Lion is recorded by the Philhamonia a Vent conducted by Douglas Boyd and is available on the Clavier later and streaming on Apple Music https://music.apple.com/gb/album/bennett-r-reflections-on-a-16th-century-tune/333637208

See 25th March for details

Over a century since it was written, The Threepenny Opera by Brecht and Weill continues to dazzle audiences worldwide and occupy a singular place in the musical landscape. In this course, celebrated composer Stephen McNeff unravels the collaborative magic between lyricist and musician that produced this masterpiece. 

See 18th March for full listing

For full details please see the Roundtable website here.

See 25th March for details

Over a century since it was written, The Threepenny Opera by Brecht and Weill continues to dazzle audiences worldwide and occupy a singular place in the musical landscape. In this course, celebrated composer Stephen McNeff unravels the collaborative magic between lyricist and musician that produced this masterpiece. 

See 18th March for full listing

For full details please see the Roundtable website here.

Over a century since it was written, The Threepenny Opera by Brecht and Weill continues to dazzle audiences worldwide and occupy a singular place in the musical landscape. In this course, celebrated composer Stephen McNeff unravels the collaborative magic between lyricist and musician that produced this masterpiece. 

Now universally regarded as a work of genius, Bertholt Brecht’s and Kurt Weill’s The Threepenny Opera was at first a commercial and critical failure. Like The Beggar’s Opera, the 1728 musical satire on which it was based, it was an “anti-opera,” using popular tunes in place of grand, sweeping orchestration, and popular themes of drinking, sex, and the struggles of poverty, in place of epic loves and tragedies.

Brecht and Weill’s version, the source of beloved standards like “Mack the Knife” and “Pirate Jenny,” premiered in Weimar Germany — a period of grinding poverty and depression — as a bawdy, darkly comic critique of capitalism. The now-legendary Lotte Lenya played the starring role of Jenny. In spite of an weak initial reception, the play soon found its audience and went on to have over 400 performances, until Weill and Brecht were forced to flee Germany after the Nazi rise to power. 

Your guide in this course, Stephen McNeff, is an Irish-born, Welsh-raised composer of operas and instrumental music and an instructor at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London, who wrote the chapter on The Threepenny Opera in The Cambridge Companion to Brecht. 

McNeff is a lifelong student of Weill and Brecht, whose own work is notably influenced by theirs. For him, there is mystery and magic in the collaborative process, especially that between composer and librettist — and nowhere is that strange alchemy on display more prominently than in The Threepenny Opera.

In this exciting, artist-led journey of discovery, you’ll peek behind the curtain of the act of creation, learning about the making of this work of genius, the musical and lyrical inventions that make it inimitable, and the nature of creative collaboration itself.

For full details please see the Roundtable website here.

Experience an unforgettable musical collaboration between the Royal Marines Band Scotland and the Royal Northern College of Music in a concert that promises to captivate and inspire. This unique performance brings together two of the UK's finest musical institutions, blending the precision and power of the Royal Marines with the brilliance and artistry of RNCM students. Set against the backdrop of a stunning venue, the concert will feature a diverse program of music. Whether you’re a fan of military music or a lover of dynamic orchestral arrangements, this concert is sure to leave a lasting impression. Don't miss the opportunity to witness this rare fusion of talent, tradition, and innovation!

The concert is conducted by Mark Heron

The stranger is ‘a person from another world’ smitten by his discovery of the Earth: ‘this little star, so wide and so full of mysteries’.

For tickets and further information please go to: https://www.nch.ie/all-events-listing/nso-debussy-mcneff-rachmaninov/ or click here

Gavan Ring gives the Irish premiere of The Celestial Stranger in Dublin with the National Symphony Orchestra.

Conducted. by Lina González-Granados, the concert contains Debussy’s iconic Prélude à l’après-midi d’une faune and Rachmaninov’s impassioned Second Symphony.

From the National Concert Hall Website:

Stephen McNeff was born in Belfast but grew up in South Wales. He came to attention for his music for theatre and opera in the UK and Canada.

The Celestial Stranger was inspired by the discovery of forgotten texts by the 17th-century cleric and mystic, Thomas Traherne, and draws on texts by Walt Whitman, Dylan Thomas and other poets. 

Guitarist Morgan Szymanski performs La Caterina for solo guitar at Kent’s foremost autumn festival

Ray Picot said in May 2019 in his CD review in the Iberian and Latin American Music Society:

“Stephen McNeff contributed a wonderful atmospheric trilogy of pieces to 2015’s Nuevo Mundo and does so once again with the cleverly atmospheric La Catrina which explores the mythology behind the emblem of The Day of the Dead. ‘Catrina’ originally referred to a well dressed and perhaps rich woman which transmuted into the famous engraving of a skeleton wearing a large elegant floral and feathered hat. No mere ’danse macabre’, this piece is a strongly felt mediation on a subject close to the heart of Mexican culture.”

Listen to Morgan’s recording on Sarabande Records via Apple Music at this link.

The British Clarinet Ensemble will play ‘The Darkling Serenade’ in Dublin on 2nd August as part of Clarinetfest 2024 https://clarinet.org/clarinetfest-2024-dublin-ireland/

https://www.britishclarinetensemble.co.uk/bce-live

Chamber Choir Ireland presents a small, yet perfectly formed, quartet of part-songs and miniatures, spanning the centuries. Paring back the full choral sound to its most basic form, an intimate experience of hearing four exquisite voices perform everything from Palestrina to Gershwin including new works by Rhona Clarke, Stephen McNeff and Eoghan Desmond.

This concert features Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, my arrangement of the well known nursery song which takes the music in unexpectedly delightful directions. And who knew the others verses…?

Twinkle Twinkle Little Star is part of The Starlight Night set of a cappella four-part songs. The score is published by Edition Peters and is available here.

See Gavan’s Twitter entry with a rehearsal excerpt here.

Stephen McNeff - Sinfonia.

Rhondda Symphony Orchestra - A Celebration Of Welsh Composers

Stephen McNeff

• Sinfonia (2007)

• Peters Edition Limited (World)
  

First performance on 20th March 2007 by the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra conducted by Marin Alsop at the Anvil, Basingstoke and on BBC Radio

• ORCHESTRATION

  2[II:pic].2.2[II:bcl].2[II:cbn]/4.2.1.1/timp.2perc/hp/str

• DURATION15 min

• CATEGORYOrchestra

• COMPOSER

  Stephen McNeff

• PERFORMANCES

  • 4th May 2024, All Saints Church, Oystermouth, Swansea, United Kingdom

The Celestial Stranger - A Song Cycle for Tenor and Orchestra

The Celestial Stranger was inspired by the rediscovery in 1997 in the library of Lambeth Palace in London of texts by the Seventeenth Century cleric and mystic, Thomas Traherne. In these Traherne imagins a person from another world discovering earth and being enchanted by its beauty: “this little star, so wide and so full of mysteries."  In this cycle of songs our Stranger goes on to marvel at natural wonders and recounts how his (or her) brother imagines that in jumping over a stream in the moonlight he falls into a reverse world and ‘leaps over the moon’.   Drawing on other poets like Walt Whitman and Dylan Thomas, the cycle describes a broad narrative arc. In 'As Time Draws Nigh'', the realities of the earth wake the Stranger up to the warlike industrialisation of society, and the prophetic fear of a totalitarian regime are expressed in 'The Hand that Signed the Paper’.  Understanding the imperfections of the word, our traveller takes their regretful leave – perhaps one day to return.  

https://www.bbc.co.uk/events/ej9n5v

For further details please see News pages

Stephen McNeff - Sinfonia.

Rhondda Symphony Orchestra - A Celebration Of Welsh Composers

Stephen McNeff

• Sinfonia (2007)

• Peters Edition Limited (World)
  

First performance on 20th March 2007 by the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra conducted by Marin Alsop at the Anvil, Basingstoke and on BBC Radio

• ORCHESTRATION

  2[II:pic].2.2[II:bcl].2[II:cbn]/4.2.1.1/timp.2perc/hp/str

• DURATION15 min

• CATEGORYOrchestra

• COMPOSER

  Stephen McNeff

• PERFORMANCES

  • 4th May 2024, All Saints Church, Oystermouth, Swansea, United Kingdom

Chamber Choir Ireland presents a small, yet perfectly formed, quartet of part-songs and miniatures, spanning the centuries. Paring back the full choral sound to its most basic form, an intimate experience of hearing four exquisite voices perform everything from Palestrina to Gershwin including new works by Rhona Clarke, Stephen McNeff and Eoghan Desmond.

This concert features Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, my arrangement of the well known nursery song which takes the music in unexpectedly delightful directions. And who knew the others verses…?

Twinkle Twinkle Little Star is part of The Starlight Night set of a cappella four-part songs. The score is published by Edition Peters and is available here.

Chamber Choir Ireland presents a small, yet perfectly formed, quartet of part-songs and miniatures, spanning the centuries. Paring back the full choral sound to its most basic form, an intimate experience of hearing four exquisite voices perform everything from Palestrina to Gershwin including new works by Rhona Clarke, Stephen McNeff and Eoghan Desmond.

This concert features Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, my arrangement of the well known nursery song which takes the music in unexpectedly delightful directions. And who knew the others verses…?

Twinkle Twinkle Little Star is part of The Starlight Night set of a cappella four-part songs. The score is published by Edition Peters and is available here.

Chamber Choir Ireland presents a small, yet perfectly formed, quartet of part-songs and miniatures, spanning the centuries. Paring back the full choral sound to its most basic form, an intimate experience of hearing four exquisite voices perform everything from Palestrina to Gershwin including new works by Rhona Clarke, Stephen McNeff and Eoghan Desmond.

This concert features Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, my arrangement of the well known nursery song which takes the music in unexpectedly delightful directions. And who knew the others verses…?

Twinkle Twinkle Little Star is part of The Starlight Night set of a cappella four-part songs. The score is published by Edition Peters and is available here.

Chamber Choir Ireland presents a small, yet perfectly formed, quartet of part-songs and miniatures, spanning the centuries. Paring back the full choral sound to its most basic form, an intimate experience of hearing four exquisite voices perform everything from Palestrina to Gershwin including new works by Rhona Clarke, Stephen McNeff and Eoghan Desmond.

This concert features Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, my arrangement of the well known nursery song which takes the music in unexpectedly delightful directions. And who knew the others verses…?

Twinkle Twinkle Little Star is part of The Starlight Night set of a cappella four-part songs. The score is published by Edition Peters and is available here.

Stephen McNeff’s latest opera, A Star Next to the Moon, receives its world premiere at Guildhall School. Based on Juan Rulfo’s iconic novel Pedro Páramo, with a libretto by Aoife Mannix, the piece explores how love and belonging struggle under a tyrannical regime.

Juan Preciado, as a deathbed promise to his mother, sets out to find his estranged father, Pedro Páramo. But the town of his birth, Comala, is not as he expected. Strange and disturbing encounters with the mysterious inhabitants start to build a picture of a town drowning in its own past.

The details of how Pedro Páramo ruthlessly rose to power as a cruel and tyrannical landowner begin to emerge. Pedro’s one glimpse of humanity is Susana, the young woman he has loved since childhood. However, her decline into sickness and death drive Pedro to despair, and to commit his ultimate act of malice.

Martin Lloyd-Evans director
Dominic Wheeler conductor
Anna Reid designer
Anthony Doran lighting designer
Jonathan Waller fight director
Raniah Al-Sayed intimacy director

Stephen McNeff’s latest opera, A Star Next to the Moon, receives its world premiere at Guildhall School. Based on Juan Rulfo’s iconic novel Pedro Páramo, with a libretto by Aoife Mannix, the piece explores how love and belonging struggle under a tyrannical regime.

Juan Preciado, as a deathbed promise to his mother, sets out to find his estranged father, Pedro Páramo. But the town of his birth, Comala, is not as he expected. Strange and disturbing encounters with the mysterious inhabitants start to build a picture of a town drowning in its own past.

The details of how Pedro Páramo ruthlessly rose to power as a cruel and tyrannical landowner begin to emerge. Pedro’s one glimpse of humanity is Susana, the young woman he has loved since childhood. However, her decline into sickness and death drive Pedro to despair, and to commit his ultimate act of malice.

Martin Lloyd-Evans director
Dominic Wheeler conductor
Anna Reid designer
Anthony Doran lighting designer
Jonathan Waller fight director
Raniah Al-Sayed intimacy director

Stephen McNeff’s latest opera, A Star Next to the Moon, receives its world premiere at Guildhall School. Based on Juan Rulfo’s iconic novel Pedro Páramo, with a libretto by Aoife Mannix, the piece explores how love and belonging struggle under a tyrannical regime.

Juan Preciado, as a deathbed promise to his mother, sets out to find his estranged father, Pedro Páramo. But the town of his birth, Comala, is not as he expected. Strange and disturbing encounters with the mysterious inhabitants start to build a picture of a town drowning in its own past.

The details of how Pedro Páramo ruthlessly rose to power as a cruel and tyrannical landowner begin to emerge. Pedro’s one glimpse of humanity is Susana, the young woman he has loved since childhood. However, her decline into sickness and death drive Pedro to despair, and to commit his ultimate act of malice.

Martin Lloyd-Evans director
Dominic Wheeler conductor
Anna Reid designer
Anthony Doran lighting designer
Jonathan Waller fight director
Raniah Al-Sayed intimacy director

Stephen McNeff’s latest opera, A Star Next to the Moon, receives its world premiere at Guildhall School. Based on Juan Rulfo’s iconic novel Pedro Páramo, with a libretto by Aoife Mannix, the piece explores how love and belonging struggle under a tyrannical regime.

Juan Preciado, as a deathbed promise to his mother, sets out to find his estranged father, Pedro Páramo. But the town of his birth, Comala, is not as he expected. Strange and disturbing encounters with the mysterious inhabitants start to build a picture of a town drowning in its own past.

The details of how Pedro Páramo ruthlessly rose to power as a cruel and tyrannical landowner begin to emerge. Pedro’s one glimpse of humanity is Susana, the young woman he has loved since childhood. However, her decline into sickness and death drive Pedro to despair, and to commit his ultimate act of malice.

Martin Lloyd-Evans director
Dominic Wheeler conductor
Anna Reid designer
Anthony Doran lighting designer
Jonathan Waller fight director
Raniah Al-Sayed intimacy director

RTÉ Lyric FM broadcast Stephen McNeff’s Ballads of a Bogman - the Sigerson Clifford Song Cycle

This recording of Ballads of a Bogman: The Sigerson Clifford Song Cycle will be broadcast on RTÉ lyric fm LIVE, on 14 July at 7pm. Listen online here.

Recorded live on 16 October 2022 at the Daniel O’Connell Memorial Church Cahersiveen.

Gavan Ring, tenor
Louise Thomas, piano
Recording Engineer: Paul Ashe-Browne

Acclaimed Irish tenor Gavan Ring and pianist Louise Thomas present the ‘homecoming’ performance in this recording of Ballads of a Bogman - a cycle of nine songs by CMC Composer Stephen McNeff based on the evocative poetry of the bard of Iveragh, Sigerson Clifford.

The song cycle was devised during 2021 as part of the Contemporary Music Centre's Contemporary Artists Network (formerly CMC Colleagues), where Stephen, Gavan and Louise began their collaboration. On this subject, Stephen McNeff who is Professor of Composition at the Guildhall School of Music in London says, ‘I had been a big fan of Gavan’s voice and I approached him in late 2020 to collaborate as part of ‘CMC Colleagues’ a Contemporary Music Centre initiative to partner composers and artists together. Gavan had no hesitation in recommending that I look at Clifford’s poetry. I was instantly bowled over by his texts; Clifford possesses a clear voice and a technical mastery which made them perfect for the medium of art song’.

Through Louise Thomas, who is Associate Dean of the College of Performing Arts at Chapman University in Los Angeles, the composition of Ballads of a Bogman had its world premiere at Chapman University last year, followed by a European and Irish premiere in association with Cork Opera House at St Fin Barre’s Cathedral – only a stone’s throw away from Dean Street where Sigerson Clifford was born. This performance, however, was recorded in Clifford’s and Gavan’s hometown of Cahersiveen last October and was made possible by the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media’s Local Live Performance Programming Scheme.

1. I am Kerry Intro
2. The Ballad of the Tinker’s Son
3. The Old School
4. The Boy Remembers his Father
5. The Kerry Christmas Carol
6. The County Mayo
7. O drink your porter, tinker man!
8. The Fiddler
9. I am Kerry

Recorded at their March 24th concert at Maida Vale, the BBC Singers broadcast The Starlight Night as part of BBC Radio 3’s ‘Afternoon Concert’.

A digital programme for the whole concert is available here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/proms/extra/q7etQRBn2a/BBC-Singers-24-March-2023. Aoife Mannix’s text for The Horizons of Doubt is here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/ficca9nemjxe1l8/The%20Horizons%20of%20Doubt%20Text%20final%20edit.pdf?dl=0

About The Concert

Join the BBC Singers at the historic Maida Vale Studios for an intimate concert celebrating contemporary composer Stephen McNeff.

Led by guest conductor Grace Rossiter, enjoy a rich choral programme including pieces by Kerry Andrew, Tarik O’Regan, Rhona Clarke, Dobrinka Tabakova, Alan Bullard and Siobhán Cleary, woven between four of Stephen McNeff's works.

At the heart of the concert is the world premiere of McNeff's The Horizons of Doubt.

Recorded at their March 24th concert at Maida Vale, the BBC Singers broadcast Twinkle Twinkle Little Star as part of BBC Radio 3’s ‘Afternoon Concert’.

A digital programme for the whole concert is available here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/proms/extra/q7etQRBn2a/BBC-Singers-24-March-2023. Aoife Mannix’s text for The Horizons of Doubt is here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/ficca9nemjxe1l8/The%20Horizons%20of%20Doubt%20Text%20final%20edit.pdf?dl=0

About The Concert

Join the BBC Singers at the historic Maida Vale Studios for an intimate concert celebrating contemporary composer Stephen McNeff.

Led by guest conductor Grace Rossiter, enjoy a rich choral programme including pieces by Kerry Andrew, Tarik O’Regan, Rhona Clarke, Dobrinka Tabakova, Alan Bullard and Siobhán Cleary, woven between four of Stephen McNeff's works.

At the heart of the concert is the world premiere of McNeff's The Horizons of Doubt.

Recorded at their March 24th concert at Maida Vale, the BBC Singers broadcast The Horizons of Doubt as part of BBC Radio 3’s ‘Afternoon Concert’.

A digital programme for the whole concert is available here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/proms/extra/q7etQRBn2a/BBC-Singers-24-March-2023. Aoife Mannix’s text for The Horizons of Doubt is here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/ficca9nemjxe1l8/The%20Horizons%20of%20Doubt%20Text%20final%20edit.pdf?dl=0

About The Concert

Join the BBC Singers at the historic Maida Vale Studios for an intimate concert celebrating contemporary composer Stephen McNeff.

Led by guest conductor Grace Rossiter, enjoy a rich choral programme including pieces by Kerry Andrew, Tarik O’Regan, Rhona Clarke, Dobrinka Tabakova, Alan Bullard and Siobhán Cleary, woven between four of Stephen McNeff's works.

At the heart of the concert is the world premiere of McNeff's The Horizons of Doubt.

Lambeth Wind Orchestra give the premiere of the new concerto for Saxophone Quartet and Wind Orchestra under the baton of their new musical director Samuel Huston. Full details to come.