NOW Festival: Sarah Watts and Lamp Residents (Bass Clarinet) - entrance $25

Please note: you can purchase individual tickets for $25 each, or purchase the NOW concert series pass for $100 ($35 off).

Sarah Watts is a British clarinetist who specializes in bass clarinet and contemporary music. She has performed and recorded with various ensembles and as a soloist all over the world. She started playing the clarinet when she was six years old and chose it because her arms weren’t long enough to play the flute.

She wrote to Czech bass clarinetist Josef Horak who sent her piles of music, CDs and past concert programmes and inspired her to pursue the bass clarinet as a solo instrument. She completed a PhD in bass clarinet multiphonic analysis at Keele University and published a comprehensive guide to the theory and practice of bass clarinet multiphonics.

She is a Selmer artist, a Vandoren UK artist and a Silverstein Ligature artist. She is the director of performance at the University of Sheffield, where she also teaches clarinet and bass clarinet. She is the clarinetist with Northern Ireland’s Hard Rain Solist Ensemble, which specializes in performing core contemporary repertoire and commissioning and promoting Northern Irish and Irish composers. She has composed and authored a wide range of clarinet books for learners and improvers1. She will be teaching a bass clarinet course at the Lunenburg Academy of Music Performance in Canada in June 2023.

Program

The program for this concert will be determined closer to the concert date and be determined by the young artists and Ms Watts during the Bass Clarinet Academy that takes place June 12 - 18.