
New Music: Joseph Havlat, piano, Deni Teo, cello
29 May 2025, 8pm (doors open at 7.30pm)
Join us for a performance by Joseph Havlat, piano, and Deni Teo, cello, in the Kettle’s Yard house as part of this year’s New Music Concert Series, programmed by our New Music Curator Tom McKinney.
Two outstanding musicians, who are prominent figures on the new music scene, bring a programme of delicacy and intimacy to Kettle’s Yard, the perfect place to appreciate this intricate and hypnotic music. It was studying the fragility of spiders’ webs that informed Lisa Illean’s ever-weaver, and so the musicians are asked to weave and knit together threads of sound. Salvatore Sciarrino is the master of musical space, in which silence is almost as important as the notes, and who once said that he didn’t write music but instead created psychological experiences. In Cantica by the late Per Nørgård, Deni will dig into the cello’s ability to sing with a richness like no other instrument. And Joseph’s selected some of Bent Sørensen’s magical Nocturnes, piano miniatures that range from lullabies to moonlit waltzes.
Programme
Lisa Illean – ever-weaver
Salvatore Sciarrino – Melencolia I
Per Nørgård – Cantica
Bent Sørensen – Nocturnes (extracts)
About Joseph Havlat
Joseph Havlat is an Australian pianist and composer from Hobart, who is based in London. He works frequently as a soloist, having given recitals at Wigmore Hall, Queen Elizabeth Hall and King’s Place, and also chamber musician, having performed with artists such as James Ehnes and Steven Isserlis. He has released CDs on the LSO Live label (the premiere recording of John Adams’ two-piano work ‘Roll Over Beethoven’), Métier (music by Michael Finnissy) and Delphian Records (Schubert violin and piano works) amongst others. Passionate about modern and contemporary music, he has collaborated with such composers as Thomas Adès, Sir Harrison Birtwistle, Gerald Barry and Hans Abrahamsen. As a composer, his music often explores the sounds of the natural world, imbued with the harsher shapes of human modernity. He has written music spanning from solo voice to large ensemble, including for his own Ensemble x.y, of which he was a founding member. He grows ferns.
About Deni Teo
Deni is one of the most versatile cellists of her generation. She is a member of Explore Ensemble, winners of the Ernst von Siemens Musikstifung Ensemble Prize 2022, and a regular guest with Riot Ensemble and UPROAR Wales New Music Ensemble. Explore Ensemble’s 2024-25 season included performances at Transit Festival in Belgium, Rainy Days Festival in Luxembourg and the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival.
Deni completed her Undergraduate and Postgraduate degrees at the Royal College of Music, studying with Melissa Phelps. Alongside her contemporary projects, she also enjoys a varied career in orchestral and film session playing. Deni regularly performs with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, BBC Concert Orchestra, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, London Contemporary Orchestra and was on trial with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra. She is also a member of Her Ensemble, a group dedicated to addressing the gender gap and gender stereotypes in the music industry.

Introduction from New Music Curator, Tom McKinney
This is my fifth season as the New Music Curator at Kettle’s Yard, and it’s a real pleasure to see just how keen musicians are to come and play in this uniquely special place. We started the year with the fantastic Ligeti Quartet returning to us for the first time since 2018. Their concert set up something of a theme for this series, with great composers from the end of the last century sitting alongside music composed in recent years. Although each concert will be completely different, like the Ligeti Quartet, the Leonore Trio, Marie Schreer, Joseph Havlat and Deni Teo are all mesmerising performers. They can communicate directly with an audience, as they take us through fascinating, beautiful, wild, gentle and engrossing evenings of music.