Gavin’s new commission, Rough Voices, for the BBC Proms has been met with critical acclaim.
The Guardian called it a ‘grieving, fierce and dissonant, a howl of protest’, whilst The Arts Desk said, ‘his new piece Rough Voices was placed as the centrepiece of the Prom programme, and through its sheer quality it had definitely earned that prominent exposure… After one hearing I definitely want to go back and hear it again, and hope and expect that in the fullness of time it will get a lot more performances.
The Telegraph said Rough Voices ‘stood out like a boulder. It’s an angry response to the way the pandemic has exacerbated social inequalities, expressed through a tender chorale which is constantly ripped asunder by a cry of pain’ and the Times commented on how ‘Higgins organised his material with pungent skill, tension and drama’.
Anna Picard in the Times Literary Supplement said of the piece, ‘Rough Voices… had passion and punch and produced a remarkably robust, energized soundworld from reduced forces… Higgins raged at the cruelty of domestic policies that compounded pre-existing inequalities. It was the closest to protest or critique that anyone got in a fortnight of Keep Calm and Carry On concerts.’
You can watch and listen to Rough Voices and indeed the whole Prom by BBC NOW on iPlayer and BBC Radio 3 for one month.