An Englishman in Beijing

Note

I was privileged to conduct the Beijing Municipal Youth Palace Wind Band for over a decade, when the Youth Palace still occupied the imperial courtyards on the north side of Jingshan Park. It was a magical place to work and an exciting time to be in Beijing.  I’d had some great experiences working with them on the Holst Suites and some of the big Percy Granger pieces, and I wanted to write a work for the group that would challenge them in a similar way, but provide a more “local” reason to do the necessary practice. So I wrote a piece that is essentially a series of picture postcards reflecting my experiences in Beijing from the late 1990s to around 2008.

In the music, I’ve tried to capture something of modern Beijing’s proclivity to grandiose brashness that runs parallel to tremendous warmth and generous hospitality. There are also snapshots of some of the defining moments in Beijing life of that time: the tearing down of buildings by work gangs equipped with nothing but hammers, the appalling air pollution and the equally appalling traffic congestion. But these are interlaced with magical moments – the light-festooned trees around the Forbidden City, and the sudden summer rainstorms that make way for brilliant blue skies.

The piece was originally titled ‘In Beijing’ as a tongue-in-cheek nod to Robin Holloway’s wonderful orchestra work ‘In China’. However, its current title better reflects the biographical elements in the music.