More Spitalfields activity on Thursday, a COMA concert including premieres by Richard Barrett, Andrew Toovey, Philip Cashian, John Woolrich, and Michael Finnissy's wonderful piece Molly-House ...

COMA is Contemporary Music Making for Amateurs. Most of these pieces are written for a flexible instrumental line-up and allow for a degree of variation in how they are realised. Perhaps any composers who've worked with COMA might like to say more about their own experiences of writing for the ensemble/interacting with the players in its various incarnations.

Thanks for that intriguing assessment, autoharp! My own favourites were Harvey, Barrett and Toovey; the Finnissy didn't quite do it for me last night but I've heard that piece on another occasion and liked it very much indeed; the Burrell and Bowden I found more or less enjoyable if perhaps not entirely successful; the Woolrich was a semi-likeable mess that seemed to be basically a watered-down version of his usual concert music, the Cashian was a pleasant if brief diversion that bore no perceptible relation to the 18th-century torture machine described in the programme note, and, well, I think we can agree on the noisy one that shall remain nameless.

I'm glad you liked my little contribution. For one reason and another I hadn't managed to get to any rehearsals or make contact with conductor or players before the concert, so (given that the score is open to many different kinds of interpretation) I had little idea of what to expect when it started. I think the idea of constantly-changing instrumentation and timbre in the continuous central melody worked well, although the changes could have been more pronounced, and the various kinds of deviation from the melody, up to and including free improvisation, seemed to be treated in a more reverential and "polite" way than I'd expected. I'm sure it will be possible to develop those aspects further in preparing future performances.

One of the striking aspects of the Finnissy piece was that the players so obviously enjoyed doing it, as opposed to the embarrassed and/or po-faced approach that "professionals" might take with such a work. Apart from this I found the Toovey most interesting.