Winter in Sherwood

A welcome addition to our catalogue by theatre composer Jason Carr, who hesitates to confess this piece started as a dream that he’d written a Robin Hood ballet, with a stage full of people dancing a rather un-English Tarantella at Nottingham Fair. The resulting one movement Phantasy is in three standard Fast-Slow-Faster sections with plenty of lively interaction between the instruments.

The piece is an evocation of the noble, mythic England of Richard the Lionheart, Robin Hood and Sherwood Forest and includes a march depicting the callous ruling class, some contrasting, comic music (the good-natured commoners), and a deep, wintry section before we we finally arrive at Nottingham Fair, where good - or at least Spring - prevails in the form of a glorious final Tarantella.

Also available in a version for Flute, Bb Clarinet and Piano Born in Leeds, Jason studied composition at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London. He won the 1988 Vivian Ellis Prize for young writers of musicals, leading to the invitation from Sir Peter Hall to compose the musical Born Again at Chichester Festival Theatre in 1990. He was Associate Composer at Chichester from 2003 to 2005, and was nominated in the Stage Works category of the British Composer Awards for Six Pictures of Lee Miller in 2006. As an orchestrator, he won New York’s Drama Desk Award for the 2007 revival of Stephen Sondheim’s Sunday in the Park with George, was nominated twice for the Tony Award, and for London’s Olivier Award in 2020.