More Up wins Ivors Composer Award
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More Up, a piece for orchestra and electronics composed by Oliver Vibrans and commissioned by Orchestras Live, has won a prestigious Ivors Composer Award in the Community and Participation category.
The annual Ivor Novello Awards were announced in a special programme on BBC Radio 3 on Tuesday 1 December, hosted by Kate Molleson and Tom Service, and represent a pinnacle of achievement in peer recognition of excellence across the UK music creator community.
An outstanding example of musical integration that’s very skilfully written for the forces and ranges of abilities involved, showing all the performers at their best. The spectral sound world is beautiful. The embedded approach to the electronics and visual elements in the work extremely well crafted and thought through. It’s an adventurous and sophisticated piece of music, complex but interesting. Simply stunning.
~ Ivors Composer Awards judges' citation
Commissioned by Orchestras Live in partnership with Inspire Youth Arts and Inspire Music, More Up was written for the Able Orchestra, an inclusive ensemble comprising young musicians, some of whom are profoundly disabled, and adult musicians and digital artists from different genres including players from the Hallé and BBC Philharmonic. In the piece, Oliver Vibrans brings together and gives voice to multiple approaches to creating music, including using technology to empower a wider range of people to shape and perform music, in a performance that transcends its individual components and expands our understanding of what music-making can and should be.
The premiere performance, on 29 January 2020 at the BBC Philharmonic Studio, Salford, transported the capacity audience of 250 people into an immersive blend of digital and acoustic orchestral sound, incorporating live digital imagery, engaging the audience and performers in a vision of the orchestra of the future.
Oliver Vibrans receiving his Ivors Award
Thank you so much to the Ivors Academy for this, it's truly bonkers. Thank you so much to Orchestras Live and to Stuart, for giving me the opportunity to write the piece which was truly amazing. Thank you to the Hallé and the BBC Phil for playing it so wonderfully, and particularly to Chris and Bea from the Hallé, who supported me and everyone in the process so much. Massive thank you to Si, who dealt with all the tech, and for turning my crazy idea into something that could actually happen in real life. Thank you so much to the students from the schools in Nottinghamshire and Manchester, for inspiring me and everyone to create what we did.
~ Oliver Vibrans on receiving his Ivors Award
Warmest congratulations to Oliver on winning this coveted award. The judges have recognised his ambition and skill in creating a complex work that makes the most of the forces of Able Orchestra and bears scrutiny as an exceptional piece in its own right.
~ Sarah Derbyshire, Orchestras Live Chief Executive

For all press enquiries and images, contact Alex Marshall, Communications Strategist: comms@orchestraslive.org.uk