Gratitude for the 34 years music ministry of James Walker at All Saints Church, Pasadena

With gratitude for the 34 year music ministry of James Walker at All Saints Church, Pasadena



If you know James at all, it comes as no surprise that he has a searchable database of the music used at every service during his tenure as music director at All Saints Church.

I am grateful to have received four premiere performances from Coventry and Canterbury Choirs over the years.

The highlight of my experience there was the performance of "All Unto Me,"inspired by and dedicated to Archbishop Desmond Tutu, in 2011, on the day he last preached from our pulpit.

July 1 Recording Session for Imagined/Remembered

On July 1 Ovidiu Marinescu, cello, and Anna Kislitsyna, piano, 

recorded by my cello sonata

Imagined/Remembered

in Philadelphia

Coming May 19, 2018 to Weill Hall at Carnegie Hall, New York City

Ovidiu Marinescu, cello, and Anna Kislitsyna, piano

will perform my cello sonata

Imagined/Remembered

brought to you by Parma Recordings

This piece appears on my 2015 album

Time, Still

on the Navona label 

From American Record Guide

(July-August 2015)

Mark Lehman

Best, and most substantial, is Babcock’s three-movement, 18-minute cello sonata (subtitled Imagined/Remembered). The first movement pits long, singing cello lines against happily scampering piano figures, later reversing roles as the cello scampers and the piano sings. The second is a slow, measured elegy and shows Babcock at his darkest and most searching, the cello’s troubled ruminations punctuated by the piano’s slowly treading low notes and arch-like arpeggios. 

Some photos from our February 2017 concerts with the Space Coast Symphony in Florida in February . . .

from my pre-concert filmed introduction . . .

the downbeat . . .

en route . . .

continuing onward . . .

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EVENT HORIZON in Concert February 25 & 26!

Back by popular demand, the Space Coast Symphony Orchestra will present “The Planets in HD,” a celebration of space exploration. The concert opens up with the Southeast US Premiere of an atmospheric and engaging work by Bruce Babcock, Event Horizon, with video footage from the NASA-Hubble space telescope. Then, the SCSO present one of Collins’ favorite collaborators, award-winning composer Kenneth Fuchs. Guitarist and composer D.J. Sparr will perform Fuchs’ powerful Glacier (Concerto for Electric Guitar and Orchestra). In 2014, the SCSO dazzled audiences with Gustav Holst’s epic work, The Planets. Experience a profound new approach to Holst’s symphonic powerhouse, The Planets, live with HD images from NASA projected on the big screen.

Event Horizon Performances February 25 & 26 2017 to be performed by the
Space Coast Symphony conducted by Aaron Collins

Notes on Event Horizon

My most influential mentors in terms of both composition and orchestration were American/Swiss composer Paul Glass, Hugo Friedhofer, and Earle Hagen. Paul studied with Witold Lutosławski, Earle studied with both Ernst Toch and serialist George Tremblay, and Hugo orchestrated dozens of scores for Erich Wolfgang Korngold and Max Steiner, among many others. Event Horizon reflects some of those influences and serves as a tribute to that legacy.

Scored for conventional full orchestra, the score does require a wide range of percussion instruments while employing only four players.

Event Horizon is a term used in the field of general relativity. It is most commonly associated with black holes and refers to the point at which the gravitational pull of the black hole becomes so great as to make escape impossible. Both my father and grandfather were astrophysicists, which inspired the title.

Event Horizon was recorded by an orchestra consisting of some of London’s finest orchestral musicians, known for the day as The Wembley Players. 

YouTube video of Event Horizon

Navona Catalog Page for Sparks

Facebook Page

Two Upcoming Performances of EVENT HORIZON in Florida . . .

Event Horizon Florida Performances Information