Scotland\u2019s Thea Musgrave is still writing radical music with perambulatory soloists and a message of hopefulness. Her latest work, for bassoonist Amy Harman, comes to the Proms this weekend<\/p>\n
Thea Musgrave is a phenomenon. Born in Scotland in 1928, the composer has lived in the US since the early 70s, but has lost none of her accent, her infectious optimism, and her drive to keep writing. As she told me from her home in California, with a joyfully rolling laugh, \u201cI\u2019ve got to this age, and from now on I\u2019m going to do what the fuck I want to do\u201d. That includes her latest opera, on Virginia Woolf\u2019s novel Orlando \u2013 Orlando: An Escapade \u2013 which will premiere at the Buxton festival next year<\/a>, and a new bassoon concerto for Amy Harman, Out of the Darkness, which you can hear at the Proms this weekend, on 23 August<\/a>.<\/p>\n The bassoon concerto develops one of the central innovations of Musgrave\u2019s life and career, which she\u2019s still intensifying and exploring in her 99th year: what she calls her \u201cdramatic-abstract\u201d approach to her orchestral compositions, in which the players aren\u2019t a single collective told what to do by a conductor\u2019s gestures, but instead are released as individual characters and identities.<\/p>\n
![](\"https:\/\/i.guim.co.uk\/img\/media\/9206d681290c0a640cdb47ea90583fb5b5d92a50\/132_670_1749_1399\/master\/1749.jpg?width=140&quality=85&auto=format&fit=max&s=7d0fd9c437ab33f473cdbe8ee0e097ad\" "\\"\u2018You\u2019ll")
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