Played by: Daniel Shao, Laura Davies, and Matthew Higham.

Tsukanoma

Vocal piece written back in August for the Juice Vocal Ensemble + MaJiKer on the Sound and Music summer course 

(c) Anna Disley-Simpson 10/8/13

Underneath

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening [2021] by Anna Disley-Simpson
Words by Robert Frost

Premiered and recorded on 10/12/21 by the Huddersfield Choral Society and Ellie Slorach @ Huddersfield Town Hall

Whose woods these are I think I know.   
His house is in the village though;   
He will not see me stopping here   
To watch his woods fill up with snow.   

My little horse must think it queer   
To stop without a farmhouse near   
Between the woods and frozen lake   
The darkest evening of the year.   

He gives his harness bells a shake   
To ask if there is some mistake.   
The only other sound’s the sweep   
Of easy wind and downy flake.   

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,   
But I have promises to keep,   
And miles to go before I sleep,   
And miles to go before I sleep.

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

Performed by the Consone Quartet, National Centre for Early Music, York, May 2022.

Anfang

Mix for V Day

Obvs credz to Donna Summer, Katrina and her waves, Beady eye, and The Beatles.

Just 4 fun

L YOU V

Full NYOGB making 1 page of my music sound immense 2k15.

Shapes were thrown

Inspired by the woodland tarot cards, in particular 'The Blasted Oak' card, this piece was written on the NYOGB summer residency and performed by an incredible NYO alumni ensemble of strings and percussion in Snape Maltings, Birmingham Symphony Hall, and The Tate Britain in August 2015.

Expect molto creakiness and foreboding energy in the first section, evoking an image of an oak tree being struck down by lightning in the middle of the shaded wood. Snapping, rustling, and crunching sounds are all there to depict the enormous branches breaking and falling to the forest floor.
   The second section of the piece is much more reflective, it focuses on the woodland as a whole. The effect of the previous dramatic occurrence leaves the forest in a heart-wrenching state of recuperation. Sumptuous strings can be found here.

Thank you so much to the outstanding musicians who learned and performed this, to Jonathan Stockhammer for conducting it like a wizard, to Anna Meredith and Larry Goves for giving us the NYO experience of a lifetime, and to the other NYO composers for being fkin lame but also the coolest/most talented group of urchins with whom I've ever had the privilege of spending so much time, all the love.

The Blasted Oak

The text for this piece is drawn from Shakespeare's 'A Midsummer Night's Dream', a work that's full of natural and ethereal imagery that I find lends itself well to music. The harmonic language combined with the textural treatment of the upper voices and lower voices, are used to evoke the other-worldly nature of the text at this point in the play. Unlike some of my more process-driven works, this piece was through composed fairly intuitively due to my close relationship to the RNCM Chamber Choir, having sung with them for the two years. Huge thanks to the choir and to Stuart Overington for conducting!

Recorded on 24th April 2018 at the RNCM Day of Song.

In their gold coats

Inspired by the poem 'A Light Exists In Spring' by Emily Dickinson, this work explores the transition from a darkened winter into a lighter, vibrant spring. At first, the ‘light’ feels distant and obscured, but as the piece progresses the brightness intensifies and a sense of hopefulness is revealed. The strings eventually begin to evoke the sprouting of new shoots whilst the wind instruments each individually depict the birds as they return from hibernation. After occurring fragmentally and fleetingly, at last the ‘light’ is unveiled as we enter into the spring.

a light exists

Brontide. : a low muffled sound like distant thunder heard in certain seismic regions especially along seacoasts and over lakes and thought to be caused by feeble earth tremours.

For 'cello and electronics, performed by Reyan Murtadha.

Commissioned for the Play Like A Girl concert at St Chrysostom's, Manchester, 14.03.19.

Anna's Album

Brontide

A delicate and luminescent lullaby, this piece anthropomorphises the moon into a shimmering maternal figure who provides a blanket of comfort over the world at night time.

Piano: Luke Holman
Soprano: Anna Disley-Simpson

Artwork: Anna Disley-Simpson

Recorded remotely on 12.05.2020

M0ther M00n

composer / singer / teacher / 

new song-cycle coming to the aldeburgh festival june 2024

guildhall opera-maker 2022-23 'lost property'

former nycgb young composer, former composer in resi with london oriana choir, singer and wannabe popstar, rncm and guildhall grad, purcell and nyogb alumna, bbc young composer winner 2014

works written for the st martin's voices, the piatti quartet, standard issue, the listening project, bbc singers, london oriana choir, hallé youth choir, the european union chamber orchestra, juice vocal ensemble, majker, rncm brand new orchestra, rncm chamber choir, the camerata players, kantos chamber choir, the ora singers, the larisa trio, members of the bbcso, the national youth orchestra, music off canvas, the manchester singers, no dice collective, the london oriana choir, huddersfield choral society, the hermes experiment, the gesualdo six, the consone quartet, psappha 

email me: adisleysimpson@gmail.com

annadisleysimpson

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