In August 2015, supported by PRS for Music Foundation, we will record our third album for Resonus Classics featuring the winners of our inaugural New Cobbett Prize for composition: Samuel Wesley Lewis, Laurence Osborn and Barnaby Martin.
The prize-winning pieces were selected by a distinguished panel of judges at the Grand Final at The Forge, Camden in December 2014. They will be recorded alongside British repertoire linked with the original, early twentieth-century Cobbett Prize: the original winner from 1905, William Hurlstones’ Phantasy Quartet and A Purcell Garland, three modern-day re-workings of the Purcell viol fantasias that inspired Cobbetts’ inaugural competition, recorded together for the first time.
For each of the composers featured on the New Cobbett Prize album this will be the first commercially available recording of their work. In addition to gaining invaluable experience through working with the Berkeley Ensemble and Resonus Classics, they will benefit significantly from the sustained and prominent exposure to national and international audiences that the album offers.
The Berkeley Ensemble gratefully acknowledges support from PRS for Music Foundation.
About PRS for Music Foundation:
PRS for Music Foundation is the UK’s leading funder of new music across all genres. Since 2000 PRS for Music Foundation has given more than £19.5 million to over 4,600 new music initiatives by awarding grants and leading partnership programmes that support music sector development. Widely respected as an adventurous and proactive funding body, PRS for Music Foundation supports an exceptional range of new music activity– from composer residencies and commissions to festivals and showcases in the UK and overseas.