Un Hommage à Erik – Piano Pieces inspired by Erik Satie

Listen Here…

Composer Information

Richard Fowles (b.1989) is an English composer, guitarist and teacher. He holds a First-class Honours Degree in Music from The Academy of Contemporary Music where he specialised in guitar performance under Giorgio Serci and Nic Meier. He continued his education at Brunel University where he studied for a Masters Degree in Composition with Christopher Fox and John Croft. He is also an Associate of The London College of Music.

‘Un Hommage à Erik’ is Richard’s debut album as a composer. He specialises in music from the first half of the 20th Century and is particularly interested in works for small ensembles and solo instruments.

His work to date as a composer has been very diverse. He has worked as both a session musician and writer/arranger in some of the UK’s biggest recording studios, working with artists signed to labels such as Sony and RedOne. He has provided the scores for a number of films and television programmes. This has required him to compose in a wide variety of genres including flamenco, jazz, orchestral and popular music. Richard is also an in demand orchestrator. As well as composing, Richard has also performed extensively throughout London and the UK. He also teaches privately and is employed by the Ealing Music Service as an instrumental tutor.

To find out more about Richard’s work, please visit

www.richardfowles.com ,

https://www.facebook.com/richardfowlescomposer/?ref=aymt_homepage_panel

https://twitter.com/Richard_Fowles

Richard is a supporter of the Campaign Against Living Miserably (CALM); a charity that exists to prevent male suicide in the UK. Please visit their website (www.thecalmzone.net ) to learn more about their important work.

Project Information

Éric Alfred Leslie Satie was born on the 17th May 1866 in Honfleur, France. For most of his life he was relatively unknown to much of the musical world, certainly outside of Paris. Satie was an undistinguished student: A bohemian in nature, he was sceptical of established ideas and authorities, and found the conventional methods of study restrictive and un-engaging. He was considered lazy his teachers, (in particular Georges Mathias, his professor of piano at the Paris Conservatoire, and Émile Decombes – one of the last pupils of Chopin – who taught piano there also), who misunderstood much of his work, and as a result did not rate him highly.  In later life, Satie found that his lack of theoretical knowledge limited him and so returned to school at around the age of 40. He never achieved financial success, and only attained a degree of fame towards the end of his life, for the controversial ballet ‘Parade’.

Despite the low profile both during his life, and to a lesser extent in the years subsequent to his death, as a composer, Satie helped shape the music of the 20th century. He influenced contemporaries such as Debussy and Ravel, and was a mentor and inspiration for ‘Les Six’; a group of young composers who saw in him “l’esprit nouveau”. He was a precursor to many of the movements that followed him, such as minimalism, avant-garde and even jazz. Satie also contributed several pieces to the piano repertoire that have become favourites of performers and audiences alike. Nevertheless, his work remained widely under appreciated until the middle of the 20th century when composers such as John Cage started acknowledging the influence he had on them. It is perhaps only in recent decades, when we have been able to look back at the 20th century and trace his influence on composers such as Stravinsky, Reich and others, that Satie’s deeply original music has started to receive the attention it deserves.