Compositions

A piece to bring a bit of fun and joy at a time when there's so much bad news in the world.

For this piece, I wanted to see what I could do with very little material. I wrote short snippets, some one or two bars long, some half a bar, some just a few notes. I then cut them out and arranged them in different ways. This 10-minute piece is the result of those experiments.

Writing this piece was an experience, to say the least. When I started, we were in the middle of lockdown with a five-month-old at home, and I wrote most of it while my daughter napped in the sling with me. You'd think that would lead to some chilled-out, sleepy music, but it turned out to be anything but. I wanted to create the ultimate live experience. By the time of the premiere, we'd all gone more than a year without live music, and six percussionists with huge set-ups, in surround sound, was the opposite of everything we'd experienced that year. Time to bring back live performance with a bang!

When I wrote this piece, I was interested in people's expectations of what things sound like, and how intrigued they are when the actual sound turns out to be different. Most of us can imagine what a smashing tile sounds like, probably from hearing one clatter to the floor. But place a piece on some acoustic foam, strike it with a vibraphone mallet, and it sounds surprisingly different.

A short piece written and devised for the Sounds from a Safe Harbour festival in 2015. I wanted it to use some unusual sounds while being fun for performers and audience alike.