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JOHN PITTS, born 1976 in England, is a composer of chamber music, especially for piano - perhaps most easily summarised as melodic, motoric, motif-driven, jazz-tinged, post-minimal impressionism. His pieces for two pianists have been performed at concerts and festivals in several European countries, Armenia, Australia, Russia and the USA, including in March 2015 a concert dedicated to his music in Perpignan's "Festival Prospective 22ème siècle" by French duo Émilie Carcy and Matthieu Millischer. His most frequently sold books are How to Play Indian Sitar Raags on a Piano (2016 - with a revised edition expected in 2020) and Indian Ragas for Piano Made Easy (2nd Edition 2020). [Read reviews here]
His 2009 album Intensely Pleasant Music: 7 Airs & Fantasias and other piano music by John Pitts, performed by the amazing Steven Kings, was released to critical acclaim - receiving a 5 star review in Musical Opinion Magazine, several 4 star reviews including the Independent Newspaper, with descriptions such as "beautiful, moving and relaxing", "delicious", "lovely", "colossal… stunning and seriously impressive", "great character and emotional integrity", "exciting stuff all round… toes - prepare to tap." Reviewers seeking to describe the pieces on the disc referred to "Prokofiev's Toccata rewritten by Steve Reich", "Keith Jarrett, Sun Ra and Bud Powell", "Bach and Scarlatti all the way through to Einaudi and Nyman, taking in Scott Joplin and Erik Satie", "Debussy, a little Messiaen, `La vallée des cloches' (Ravel's Miroirs), but some [tracks] wear their modal, English-music origins with pride… Vaughan Williams and Graham Fitkin." Oleg Ledeniov of MusicWeb International wrote "There are many pleasant discoveries - melodic, rhythmic, sonic - but almost no standard or predictable moves or clichés - at least, for me. The listener doesn't have to work hard to get into the music: a kind of minimalistic "submerge and relax" attitude will definitely do the trick. This is a colorful and interesting set by a talented composer. And if harmony is your thing, you'll find much to admire here." John studied at Bristol and Manchester Universities, under composers Wyndham Thomas, Adrian Beaumont, Raymond Warren, Geoffrey Poole, John Casken, John Pickard and Robert Saxton, and briefly with Diana Burrell in a COMA Composer Mentor scheme. He won the 2003 Philharmonia Orchestra Martin Musical Scholarship Fund Composition Prize at the Royal Festival Hall in London, and two of his chamber pieces were shortlisted by the Society for the Promotion of New Music. He has also written music for four plays and two short operatic works – “Crossed Wires” (Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival 1997), and “3 Sliced Mice” (commissioned by Five Brothers Pasta Sauces). He writes music for Christian worship, with two hymns on Naxos CDs recorded by his eldest brother composer Antony Pitts and Tonus Peregrinus, including one in Faber's The Naxos Book of Carols. In 2006 Choir & Organ magazine commissioned "I will raise him up at the last day" for their new music series. John was the secretary of the Severnside Composers Alliance from its inception in 2003 until 2015, with a special interest in music for piano triet by living composers. His own first triet "Are You Going?" ("a toccata boogie of unstoppable, unquenchable verve" Jonathan Woolf, MusicWeb International) was premiered at the 2010 Kiev Chamber Music Session Festival by the Kiev Piano Duo (with Antoniy Baryshevkiy), for whom he wrote “Gaelic Faram (Jig in Kiev)” for 2 pianos and 2 percussionists for the 2012 festival. John has conducted four Bristol Savoy Operatic Society productions, arranging Pirates of Penzance, Gondoliers and Iolanthe for small band. In January 2010 he became the Associate Conductor of the Bristol Millennium Orchestra, with whom he has given a number of first performances of music by living composers. In 1994 he spent a gap year in Pakistan, which led to a number of chamber pieces heavily influenced by Indian classical music, including "Raag Gezellig", a piano duet composed as the compulsory work for the Valberg International Piano 4 Hands Competition 2011, subsequently recorded by French duo Bohêmes (Aurélie Samani and Gabriela Ungureanu) and released by 1EqualMusic/Hyperion. Hearing that virtuosic Indian piano duet performed by a number of superb duos led to the books How to Play Indian Sitar Raags on a Piano (Intensely Pleasant Music, 2016), and Indian Ragas for Piano Made Easy (2nd Edition 2020). |