Mark-Anthony Turnage (b. Corringham, Essex, 1960)
Duration: 13 minutes
Instrumentation: solo violin and string orchestra
Thirty-some years ago, Mark-Anthony Turnage burst on the scene as the “angry young man” of British music. Much of his early work was highly political, with frequent references to jazz and pop music. (Two of his operas that achieved great notoriety are Greek, a modern urban version of the Oedipus story, and Anna Nicole, about the life of the American model and actress Anna Nicole Smith.) Today, at sixty-one, Turnage is a Commander of the British Empire, but his music has lost nothing of its youthful emotional power and its dramatic edge. Yet it is an unmistakable sign of the passing of time that in recent years, Turnage has written several in memoriam pieces for deceased friends: Remembering (2014-15) for 26-year-old jazz musician Evan Scofield; Symphonic Movements (2017) for the distinguished composer-pianist Sir Richard Rodney Bennett, and Last Song for Olly (2020) for Turnage's former teacher and lifelong friend, the composer-conductor Oliver Knussen.
Lament memorializes British TV producer Trevor Showler, whose partner, Emma Kerr, is Turnage's publishing manager at "Boosey & Hawkes". The composer sees the work “as a way of coping and dealing with grief, almost as a healing form of therapy.”
- Peter Laki