Hothouse
Hothouse is a commissioning cycle about growth and ruin: five composers, one commission each, all answering the same question — what does music do with a place that has been left to grow wild? It opens this autumn with the first of Ilse Deme's Hothouse Songs and runs across two seasons.
The commissions
Each Hothouse piece is written for the full octet and premiered inside an ordinary concert rather than a gala — the ensemble's standing habit, on the theory that new music should arrive as repertoire, not as an occasion. Ilse Deme's song cycle is first; the remaining four commissions will be announced one at a time, as each composer delivers.