Ed Hughes' A Time For Singing for Clarinet Cello and Piano. Score and parts.'My sister the clarinettist Alison Hughes is a member of the Camilleri Trio who gave the first performance. The work was conceived in memory of our aunt Gillian Nicholls.The four movements are:1. Walk with rainstorm2. Song3. Scherzo4. Until the day breakIt is a kind of narrative - in one sense an imagined walk through a changing landscape. A very English one in other words one in which it rains! But sometimes lit up by sunshine.It remembers Gillie Nicholls who loved walking and loved life. She died from cancer in2010. I wanted to write a piece that would remember her and her wonderful enthusiasm and sense of humour as well as forming a more traditional lament. So there are elements of each in this piece.Gillie was also a profoundly spiritual person. When she and John Muddiman married in 2010 they asked me to write a short song for the wedding 'Rise Up My Love' using words from 'Song of Solomon'.The new work for the Camilleri Trio commissioned by Jennifer Hughes in memory of her sister Gillian Nicholls also refers in the main title and in the last movement title to lines from 'Song of Solomon':the time of the singing of birds is come - Song of Solomon 2:12Until the day break and the shadows flee away - Song of Solomon 2:17A Time for Singing was written for the Camilleri Trio - Alison Hughes (clarinet/bass clarinet) Anja Inge (cello) Joanne Camilleri (piano). It was first performed by them at Mansfield Chapel Mansfield College Oxford on 30 October 2011.' - Ed Hughes
