On Friday [8 May], the University enjoyed the first performance of The Sheltering Bell, a piece of music specially commissioned for the University’s centenary and composed by Geoffrey Poole, Professor of Composition in the Department of Music. 

The Sheltering Bell is a reference to Great George, the bell that sits high in the tower above the Great Hall in the Wills Memorial Building. Professor Poole’s composition starts on an E flat – Great George’s note – and includes what he describes as ‘extracts of science and academic camaraderie’.

The piece was performed and professionally recorded by the Brodowski Quartet and is available to listen to online.

Speaking about the inspiration for the piece, Professor Poole said:

‘The Wills Tower chimes its bell every hour, yet if you listen from different directions and in different weather its tone and resonance can seem to vary enormously. My string quartet composition plays on this idea, striking a symbolic hundred chimes – some of them familiar and some quite new – as diverse as the thousands of research and learning experiences that coexist in the University of Bristol and ultimately create it.’

English by birth, Professor Poole has also lived in East Africa and in the USA as Visiting Fellow in Composition at Princeton, and studied traditional performance in Korea and Gambia. 

His works, which have been performed and broadcast worldwide, include three string quartets commissioned by The Lindsays, orchestral music performed by the Hallé, the BBC Symphony Orchestra and many others, and choral music broadcast by the King’s Singers. He composed the music that accompanied the installation in 2004 of the Right Honourable the Baroness Hale of Richmond as the University’s Chancellor. Professor Poole is also a pianist, conductor, critic and theorist, and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in 2007.

The Brodowski Quartet won first prize in the 2008 Royal Overseas League Competition. Its members are ‘the new kids on the London scene’, according to The Times. They are the current recipients of the Richard Carne Junior Fellowship for Chamber Ensemble at Trinity College of Music – a role which sees them coaching student ensembles and increasing young people’s awareness of chamber music.

The Quartet has won a number of international prizes and has played with renowned musicians from the chamber music field, in particular Simon Rowland-Jones, Martin Outram and Professors Johannes Meissl and Eberhardt Feltz, in some of Europe’s leading venues, including the Queen Elizabeth Hall and the Barbican in London.