Daybreak II (after Delius) and arrangements for Reggae Origins

World Premiere: 6 February 2025, Birmingham Town Hall

Instrumentation: string quartet/rock band & string quartet

Duration: ~30m

New works for string quartet and string quartet & reggae band, including string quartet Daybreak II (after Delius).

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Benjamin Graves, much accoladed Cambridge graduate composer and scuba instructor for the Indo Ocean Project to protecting underwater habitats in Bira, South Sulawesi, Indonesia, will compose an introduction piece for Basil Gabbidon and BCMG’s Reggae Origins: Bob Marley & Handsworth Reggae for string quartet. He will also arrange a Country Dance from Baroque composer Igantio Sancho (1729 - 1780), and some arrangements of Basil Gabbidon’s songs Rising Sun and Oh jay jay for band and string quartet follow the traces How Reggae came to Birmingham, and string instruments into reggae.

Benjamin's music has been commissioned and performed by LSO; CBSO, Sinfonieorchester Basel, Aldeburh Festival, Ensemble Recherche and Durham Cathedral Young Singers. Benjamin has previously worked with BCMG's early career NEXT ensemble musicians.

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Reggae Origins is a collaborative cross-genre BCMG work for contemporary ensemble and reggae band by Basil Gabbidon and composer Benjamin Graves. Across 45+ mins Gabbidon and BCMG tell the story of reggae music and how it came to Birmingham.

The world premiere performance of Reggae Origins: Bob Marley & Handsworth Reggae was presented by BCMG and Gabbidon to a sold-out Birmingham Town Hall on Thursday 6 Feb at 7.30pm. The event marked what would’ve been Bob Marley’s 80^th birthday.

The concert opened with BCMG performing Benjamin Graves’ new string quartet Daybreak. Simon Swanson provided accompanying narration throughout the evening, charting reggae’s history from Africa to the Caribbean, to the UK. Music augmented key moments of the story: Richard Sealy’s stormy hand drum solo evoking treacherous slave ship voyages across the Atlantic, and Ben Graves’ arrangement of British African composer Ignatius Sancho’s Lindrod Lasses conjuring images the 18^th century colonial European high society. Graves also provided a poignant arrangement of Swing Low, Sweet Chariot full of fragile, transitory, harmonics.

The band then joined BCMG to perform Basil Gabbidon’s own Love Dis Ya Music along with a medley of seminal reggae works, such as Wonderful World by Jimmy Cliff and Young (see programme for more).

Reggae Origins was a deeply collaborative project from day one. Ben and Basil worked extensively on the compositions of the new song arrangements, with input from BCMG musicians during rehearsals and Artistic Director Stephan Meier. The music and the show were shaped by this collaborative process.