With over 50 works and multiple operas in his 40+ year career, John has many works you can explore. Here are some of his most popular.
Endless Song
1999 • 5′ • solo piano
Written in less than two days while staying at the Banff Centre for the Arts, Endless Song is probably John’s most played work.
First performed in 1999 at the North Wales Music Festival, MusicWeb International calls it a “very beautiful piece of almost nostalgic romanticism”.
Ivan Ilić, a Serbian pianist who has performed the piece over 60 times, says it is “a powerful piece, simple but well crafted“, and that John’s works are “natural and enjoyable to play”.
You can see Ivan performing Endless Song in the video below.
Never Odd or Even
1995 • 5′ • six pianos
Commissioned by the talented Piano Circus, ‘Never Odd or Even’ is a palindrome, something which is the same backwards as it is forwards. More accurately, the piece is a series of musical palindromes.
It is recorded on the Minimal Piano Collection CD compilation, and is also in the video below.
Under Milk Wood
2014 • 110′
- Under Milk Wood page
- CD set (two CDs) (external link)
John’s seventh and most recent opera premiered in Swansea in 2014, an adaptation of the play by Dylan Thomas.
The Guardian called it “triumphant“, while The Telegraph said it is “an operatic testimony for (Dylan) Thomas”, noting that it “captures the ripeness of Thomas’s vision and never works against the poetry”.
The trailer for the opera is in the video below.
Next steps