what people say
"...even better, Gavin Higgins's Der Aufstand, a boldy imaginative response to last summer's riots, powerfully conveyed by the wind orchestra and James Gourlay"
The Times - 13th August
"The NYWO introduced Gavin Higgins's Der Aufstand, a nicely imagined and controlled depiction of last summer's British riots"
"...whilst Higgins, not for the first time, showed himself to be a composer of vivid imagination and expressive power"
MusicWeb International - 16th August 2012
"Highlights were very definitely the NYWO's version of Brixtonite Gavin Higgins' monumental response to the 2011 riots'
The Arts Desk - 13th August 2012
"The deliberately rebarbative dissonance of Gavin Higgins's score mark it more vividly still a cousin of a ballet exactly one year younger than Faune, The Rite of Spring."
"Gavin Higgins's blasting, warping score drives the choreography into an enjoyably wild kaleidoscope of apache dances, tango and ballet"
"Gavin Higgins's score ... is a riot of rutting strings and rude brass"
"What Wild Ecstasy has a fine and rumbustious score by Gavin Higgins"
"The Rambert Dancers buzzed around to Gavin Higgins' Caustic score"
Dancing Review - May 16th 2012
"Choreography is even more crucial to Gavin Higgins's What Wild Ecstasy"
Interview from the Financial Times April 14th 2012
"...Baldwin's quirky and off-beat choreography was matched every step of the way by Gavin Higgins's score"
Wild about Rambert Commission: Uproar, outrage and vituperative scandal marked the 1912 Paris premiere of Nijinsky's L'apres de midi d'un faune - the final masturbatory gesture being pilloried in Le Figaro as a gesture of "heavy shamelessness'.
Interview from Herald Scotland February 2012.
"Higgins's music has streaks of menace as well as mischief, and Baldwin's choreography unerringly matches both strands'
Mary Brennan - Herald Scotland
"[Three Broken Love Songs] showed much intensity, even large elements of Gershwin in the first movement."
Glyn Mon Hughes - Liverpool Daily Post
"From the pastoral portraits of Forest Symphony to the black comedy Freaks!, Gavin Higgins' musical imagination embraces light and dark. Paul Hindmarsh charts the musical evolution of this gifted young composer."
Interview from Brass Band World Magazine, November 09 - issue 189, pg 20 - 21.
"Less 'high flown' in all senses, Gavin Higgins's Rage Dances is a sequence as evocative of the symphonic band as of the jazz ensemble; and with an unpredictable follow-through the composer likened to that of Manga cartoons popular in Japan, albeit with a distinct sense of 'arrival' by the end."
Richard Whitehouse - Classical Source
"At twenty six years of age, Gavin Higgins is one of the brightest stars amongst a flourishing generation of talented young composers..."
Interview from 4BR, 30 March, 2010
"Talented composer Gavin Higgins is one guy who should be blowing his own trumpet. His eclectic and colourful scores have been raising eyebrows in the Muso office - for all the right reasons...This is one composer who has certainly whet our appetites."
Article from MUSO Magazine february/march 2010 - issue 44, pg 14 - 15.
"Not since hearing John McCabe's Cloudcatcher Fells for the first time has this writer been so excited about the textural possibilities of the brass band - a door to a new vista has surely been opened by Higgins's extraordinary work"
Christoper Thomas - Brass Band World Magazine, February 2012 - issue 211, pg 23