The Cosman Keller Trust is delighted to be supporting Leighton House’s special commitment to the art of drawing.

Today sees the opening of a new exhibition, Victorian Treasures, featuring works from the collections of Cecil French and Scott Thomas Buckle, two collectors who began acquiring Victorian art against the grain of fashionable taste. This exhibition will give visitors a fascinating insight into the process of art collecting in a show that includes many works on public view for the first time.

Drawings by leading artists of the period collected by Scott Thomas Buckle will be shown in Leighton House’s new dedicated exhibition space for drawing, the Tavalozza Gallery.

On Tuesday 6 May, Susan Owens will give the 2025 Milein Cosman Lecture on the art of drawing, at the Slade School of Fine Art (where Milein Cosman studied in the 1940s).

Dr Owens’s lecture Places of the Mind, Portraits of the Soul will look at the role of drawing in soul-searching and taking stock — examining in particular the way in which the artists Jonathan Richardson (1667-1745) and John Constable (1776-1837) both used drawing to pursue projects of intense introspection.

Tickets are free and can be booked here.

On Friday 9 May, the fourth year of the Castalian String Quartet’s residency at Oxford University will culminate in two celebration concerts in which students perform with the quartet in exciting and varied programmes of chamber music.

The evening concert, in which the Quartet will join with St Anne’s Camerata, includes premieres of new works for string ensemble by composers Leandro Landolina and Nick Samuel, both in their second year studying music at Oxford (pictured left). Full details and tickets here.

Earlier in the day, oboist Tom Kirby will join the Castalians in Mozart’s oboe quartet, and cellist Oliver Simpson in Schubert’s last chamber work, his ‘cello quintet’ D.956. Full details and tickets here.

On Wednesday 23 April, the Hans Keller Forum will showcase the talents of the four ensembles who have been working together during its 2024-25 season, in its closing concert at the West Road Concert Hall. Details and tickets here.

The Seion Quartet, the Trio Thalassa, the Heartwood Quartet and the Sonas Quartet have spent three intense residencies in Cambridge, mentored by Donald Grant, Alasdair Beatson and John Myerscough. Also joining the Forum this year have been guest lecturer David Waterman and Artist-in-Residence Gabriel Kidd, the current Milein Cosman Scholar at the Slade School of Fine Art in London.

A new podcast called Words on Wordlessness goes live today. Host Nicky Swett, who has spent years studying Hans Keller’s wordless method of analysing music, presents a fascinating exploration of the idea of communicating about music through music alone.

Each series presents one of Keller’s analytical scores in performance, after which Nicky discusses it with musicians, scholars and scientists.

The first series presents Keller’s analysis of Haydn’s Quartet in D minor Op.76 No.2, performed by the Castalian String Quartet, and discussed by violinist Sini Simonen, musicologist Kate Guthrie and composer and broadcaster Bruce Adolphe.

Listen here.
(Also available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts)

It is with deep sadness that the Trust announces the death of its founding chairman, Julian Hogg.

Julian was devoted to Hans and Milein and did more than anyone to perpetuate their legacies.

Their long and close friendship began sixty years ago, at the 1964 Dartington Summer School of Music.

Read more here

Next Tuesday, 1 October, the Atenea Quartet will give the premiere of Rock, Salt, Air, Water by Electra Perivolaris, holder of the first YCAT Composer Fellowship supported by the Trust.

The work is inspired by the coastlines of her home on the Scottish Isle of Arran and of the Aegean island of Chios, home of the Greek side of her family. In particular, it is the ‘tafoni’ — holes and circles that develop in the rock as it is weathered by salt, air and seawater — that have influenced her writing, as she maps in sound these multiple overlapping loops.

The concert is at 1 pm at the Wigmore Hall — full details and tickets here.

Today sees the opening of Heartlands, Gabriel Kidd’s new exhibition with Olivia England at the Flexitron Gallery in Penton Street, London N1.

Gabriel is now in their second year as the Milein Cosman Scholar at the Slade School of Fine Art and this exhibition gives an excellent opportunity to see their latest work, including a number of new drawings.

The exhibition runs until 25 November: full details here. Please note that Flexitron is open by appointment: to book, email info(Replace this parenthesis with the @ sign)flexitrongallery.com

On Friday 26 July, Alessandro Fisher and Roger Vignoles will give a special performance of Benjamin Britten’s Seven Sonnets of Michelangelo at the British Museum, as part of the public programme accompanying the exhibition Michelangelo: the last decades, which is supported by the Trust. The evening will also feature discussion of Michelangelo’s poems and art by Grant Lewis, the Milein Cosman Project Curator at the British Museum.

Further information and tickets are available here.

Hans Keller and Milein Cosman were closely associated with Benjamin Britten from the 1940s until Britten’s death, producing a huge volume of writings and drawings relating to his works. This sketch of Britten by Milein Cosman is one of many drawings of him held in the collection of her work at the Royal College of Music Museum.

On Saturday 6 July, the Musicians of All Saints will be giving another performance of Hans Keller’s Functional Analysis of Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No.3, conducted by Sophia Bartlett.

They last performed this analysis in October 2021, and this time will be presenting it alongside the premiere of a new work for cor angles and strings by Robert Hinchcliffe.

7:30 pm, All Saints Centre, Friar’s Walk, Lewes BN7 2LE

Full programme details and tickets available here.

Next Saturday, the Alternative Conservatoire will present an exciting showcase of new works from the first composers to take part in its innovative artist development accelerator course, supported by the Trust.

Tickets can be booked here and a short video about the students’ experiences on the course can be seen here.

Today sees the opening of Hannah Uzor’s solo show, Conversations with Grandma at the Niru Ratnam Gallery, 71-73 Great Portland Street, London W1W 7LP.

Hannah Uzor was the holder of the first Milein Cosman Scholarship at the Slade School of Fine Art, 2021-23. This new exhibition of her latest work is a profound exploration of memory, cultural identity and transformation.

The figure of the grandmother, as repository of stories, traditions and domestic practices (such as recipes) for future generations, is a key one in Uzor’s work, showing how those in the diaspora negotiate memories and everyday traditions to gain a sense of the past that can inform the present or point forward into possible futures.

Conversations with Grandma continues at the Niru Ratnam Gallery until 26 May.

The Trust is pleased to be collaborating with the Young Classical Artists Trust in a new initiative aimed at supporting composers who are establishing their careers.

YCAT’s new Hans Keller Composition Fellowship will be awarded annually from 2024. The selected Composer Fellow will receive a commission to write two chamber works for specific YCAT artists, giving a valuable opportunity for composer and performers to work closely together throughout the composition process, with the finished works premiered across several regional UK venues, culminating in a Wigmore Hall recital.

The Trust is delighted that the first Hans Keller Composer Fellow will be the remarkable Electra Perivolaris. Described by Sir James MacMillan as ‘one of the most exciting young composers emerging in Scotland today’, her work has already been widely performed, including by the London Sinfonietta, the BBC Concert Orchestra and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, and this year she was nominated for an RPS award for her work with Streetwise Opera’s Re:Sound project, creating new opera in collaboration with homeless communities.

On 24 April 2024, the Slade School of Fine Art will host the inaugural Milein Cosman public lecture on the art of drawing — the first of a new series of lectures on drawing which will be held annually at the Slade in memory of Milein Cosman.

The inaugural lecture will be given by Professor Liz Rideal,  who will be discussing drawing by Slade artists, past and present, including Milein Cosman, who was a student at the Slade in the 1940s, when it was evacuated to Oxford during the war (you can read more about Milein’s time as a student here). Admission is free.  Further information and ticket details here.

The Stadtmuseum in Bonn is hosting a new exhibition of the work of Milein Cosman this spring, opening on 8 March 2024.

The exhibition will feature works from the collection of Milein Cosman’s art donated by the Trust to the City of Bonn’s forthcoming Forum Exilkultur, a landmark project to place the work of exiled artists, past and present, in the centre of Bonn.

This important project has grown out of the work of the collector and publisher Thomas B. Schumann, who spent decades collecting and exhibiting the work of artists forced to flee Germany during the Nazi period, eventually amassing around 1,000 artworks by 200 different artists. Milein Cosman herself was a supporter of his work, and during her lifetime donated several of her own artworks to his collection. In 2012 Schumann published Lifelines, a substantial book of Milein Cosman’s art which he co-edited with the Trust’s then chairman, Julian Hogg. A permanent exhibition on the life and work of Milein Cosman will be an important part of the Forum Exilkultur when it opens.

Next month’s special exhibition at the Stadtmuseum, Capturing the Moment: the Artist Milein Cosman, runs from 8 March until 7 April and will include special lectures and tours about Milein and her art, together with a drawing workshop for children and adults: further details here. More information about the city’s forthcoming Forum Exilkultur can be found here.

For the last two years the Trust has been supporting the work of Grant Lewis as the Milein Cosman Project Curator at the British Museum. Based in the Museum’s Department of Prints and Drawings, Grant has been a key member of the team preparing the major exhibition Michelangelo: the last decades, including researching and writing the exhibition publication and organising an international academic conference to accompany the show and cement its scholarly legacy.

The exhibition opens on 2 May 2024. Full information and tickets are available here.

The Trust is delighted to be supporting the launch of an exciting new development in music education: The Alternative Conservatoire, whose first students start their course today.

The Alternative Conservatoire addresses innovation in art with innovation in pedagogy, providing a three-month accelerator course aimed at today’s culturally and aesthetically complex composer and music creator. Founded and directed by Joel Bell and Bushra El-Turk (whose Saffron Dusk for string quartet was commissioned by the Trust), the Alternative Conservatoire is designed to provide what traditional university and conservatoire courses do not. We hope that Hans Keller (who was famously suspicious of institutional music education courses) would approve!

Find out more here — and discover the first group of composers taking part in the 2024 course here.

The Trust is delighted that the Elmore Quartet are the new Hans Keller Chamber Fellows at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama for the 2023-24 year.

They will be performing Haydn’s Op.54 No.2 and Webern’s Five Movements Op.5 at the Milton Court Concert Hall at 8 pm on Tuesday 5 December. Admission is free so this is an excellent chance to hear them!

The Castalian String Quartet returns to Oxford this month for the third year of their Hans Keller String Quartet Residency at Oxford University.

They have an exciting series of concerts planned — see here for full details — including another performance of Mark-Anthony Turnage’s Awake on 30 November. Book tickets here.