(for mezzo-soprano and large ensemble)

Behind the Pattern was premiered by Britten-Pears Contemporary Ensemble, Jonathan Berman, conductor, Aldeburgh Festival, England, UK

Behind The Pattern

The Bleak Winter is a reference to the famous carol and poem. The piece draws inspiration from the first verse, where the Christina Rosetti describes the earth, winds, snow, and water, and imagines the four separate elements freezing and crystallising.

Conductor - Benedict Collins Rice

Flute - Simone Maurer
Clarinet - David Mears
French Horn - Hugh Sisley
Piano - Adam Hickox
Percussion - Lucy Landymore
Viola - Julian Fish
Cello - Leo Popplewell

Mastered by Max Liefkes

The Bleak Winter Kings Chapel Rec

Rainbow Fires for piano trio (for the Fournier Trio)(2015

Rainbow Fires (2015) was written for the Fournier Trio as part of the Dartington International Summer School Advanced Composition School in August 2015, where my place was generously funded by the Boltini Trust. The piece takes on the imagery and concept of Rainbow Fires, a rare natural phenonmenon where clouds appear to be aflame with rainbow colours due to light being refracted by ice crystals in the atmosphere. The piece explores the different colours and associates elements air, fire and ice with different colours.

Duration c.9 mins 

Image from:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circumhorizontal_arc#/media/File:Circumhorizontal_arc_in_Michigan.jpg

Rainbow Fires for piano trio

Roxy is about people dancing. It rotates around the uniform gestures and shapes people make whilst in a tight space together, and the waves of energy, activity and trance like states that wash over them in that time together.

Written for the Cheltenham Music Festival 2016.

Performed by MANTRAS duo (Alex Wilson and Joseph Houston)
Recorded by Roger Long

Premiere recording - Parabola Arts Centre, Cheltenham 12/7/16 

Cheltenham Composers' Academy 2016

Roxy

down where sound
 comes blunt and wan
  like the bronze tone
   of a sunken gong

- Sylvia Plath, 'Aquatic Nocturne'

Written for the Cheltenham Music Festival 2016.

Performed by MANTRAS duo (Alex Wilson and Joseph Houston)
Recorded by Roger Long

Aquatic Nocturne - for piano four hands

First Performance: 26th August 2016 at Dartington Hall, Dartington International Summer School & Festival

“… the stillness brings such piece
day warm, no wind, soft… heavenly

every tree can make it’s appropriate gesture to us
nature needs from us a spring of suggestion
and ideas that will never dry up

ecstasy swept over me as I heard
my first blackbird singing.”

Extracts from Dorothy Elmhirst’s Garden Diaries

Dorothy Elmhirst (1887-1968) was an American-born social activist and philanthropist whom alongside her husband, Leonard Knight Elmhirst, renovated Dartington Hall and its gardens between 1925 up until her death in 1968, founded the Dartington Hall Trust, the Dartington Hall School, the Dartington College of Arts and the Dartington International Summer School.

ecstasy swept over me (excerpt)

Arlene Sierra 
Nature Symphony (2017)
1. Mountain of Butterflies(performance clip)
BBC Philharmonic, Ludovic Morlot, cond.

clips

Sierra: Nature Symphony - 1. Mountain of Butterflies (performance clip)

Forms Entangled, Shapes Collided (2012)

American composer based in Chicago; Cardiff Uni PhD alumna; Illuminate Co-Director; Britten-Pears Young Artist 2019-2020

Behind The Pattern

Blair Boyd

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