'Okiku' is named after the Japanese legend of Okiku, a servant girl who is deceived by the samurai of her master. After Okiku is forced to repeatedly refuse the samurai's sexual advances, the samurai resorts to threats and trickery to instil her as his lover. Eventually, an exasperated Okiku throws herself into the well, choosing death over the compromise of her morals. Her ghost is said to haunt the well of Himeji castle. 

Without touching on any of the explicit narrative elements of Okiku, this musical piece is rather an exploration of human consciousness once it loses its physicality. In Japanese folklore, spirits will only remain in the physical world after death if a strong emotion traps them there. While vengeance and betrayal are mostly what drives Okiku's spirit in the tale, the musical piece 'Okiku' follows her spirit on a journey of reflection and forgiveness, as it prepares to leave the physical realm.

Recording developed as part of a residency with AiR Niederösterreich, 2021.

Recorders - Emily Bannister
Classical Guitar - Andrea Guterres
Synthesised handbells & Electronics - Andrea Guterres

Okiku (for recorder, classical guitar, synthesised handbells, and electronics)

A piece inspired by the futurist composer Leo Ornstein. Performed by Jonah Chaffin

Fantasia à la Ornstein

‘Just Before Dawn’ is inspire by the eerie stillness and quiet which can be felt just before sunrise. This is something which I became very aware of whilst waiting for the sunrise atop Glastonbury Tor in the summer of 2021. The music is mingled with a touch of my own impatience for the new day to break.

Sheet music available: https://payhip.com/b/3dRBc 

Performed by Sonorité Quartet at St Mary's Church, North Mymms on 8th October 2022

Just Before Dawn

"Carré" is a duet exploring resonant sonorities created by open strings and natural harmonics. A simple number-based process orders the material into symmetrical music squares (16-note segments), which are themselves ordered into a larger square-like structure.

"Carré" was written for Jennifer Ames and Colin Alexander and premiered by them at 840: New Music for Viola and Cello on 7 July 2018.

Carré

Giaime Pintor: una giovinezza pallida e furente

Radiodramma in sei puntate di Carlo Rafele 

Martedì 30 Aprile prende il via una biografia sceneggiata 
dell’intellettuale antifascista a cento anni dalla nascita. 
Una produzione della sede regionale Rai Sardegna. 

Da martedì 30 aprile, ore 12,25, Radio Rai Sardegna

In streaming sul sito Sardegna Digital Library

con Michele Vargiu, Eleonora Giua, Cesare Saliu 

e la partecipazione di: 
Marco Spiga, Raffaele Chessa, Antonella Puddu 

Musiche originali: Stefano Tore

Tecnico del suono: Alessandro Grasso

Testo e regia Carlo Rafele

Un programma a cura di Stefania Martis

Giaime Pintor: una giovinezza pallida e furente TRAILER

To stand in the middle of Millennium Bridge is to feel at the centre of historical and modern London. This, the most juvenile of the central London bridges, connects the megalithic architectural wonders that are St Paul’s Cathedral and Tate Modern and offers views of Tower Bridge juxtaposed against the steel and glass of the City, The Shard and, in the distance, Docklands. It is the bridge that dared to wobble, and its structure will soon be adorned with one of Leo Villareal’s artworks.


Where to begin when considering a piece of music to accompany the artwork on this bridge, surrounded by the enormity of the ages of London? This was the question I had to grapple with when I was offered the opportunity, through Guildhall School of Music & Drama, to compose a piece for Illuminated River.

Bridges imply dyadic relationships: when crossing a river they connect two banks and their reflection in the water they span offers an illusory sense of an above coupled with a distorted below. Once illuminated, the above-below layers of Millennium Bridge will become very apparent, the varying flow of the river and its traffic affecting the distorted texture of the reflected structure. I wanted to bring the idea of layers and paired relationships into the music I would write and began by choosing to utilise two options that were offered to all the composers involved in the project.

We each had access to the Guildhall Session Orchestra for thirty minutes, just about enough time to rehearse and record a four-minute piece of music. Alternatively, we could produce our own recording of a piece of music of similar duration. I decided to write a collection of very short orchestral ‘samples’, which I would then arrange into an electronic composition. This felt like a way of embracing the old and the new: composers have been writing for orchestra since before St Paul’s was conceived, but the technology and software I would use to put together the final piece of music are only about as old as Millennium Bridge.

I wanted my piece to have a sense of above and below, foreground and background, and so chose to write two distinct types of musical materials with contrasting textures. The first texture would be smooth and sustained and its volume would either be constant or would swell and then diminish; this layer would be akin to the river, ebbing and flowing, always present. Above this would sit a pointillistic, staccato texture, very short bursts of sounds clustered together; this representing the illuminated bridge, the above.

Once the raw materials had been recorded, I took them into my home studio and began the process of composing the final piece of music. Each of the orchestral samples lasted between 5 and 10 seconds and I thought of them as building blocks, but blocks that could be stretched, warped and distorted, much as the river will do for the reflection of the illumination. I gave myself two constraints: first, to use a specific chord structure, one which uses each major and each minor chord once only in a specific order, all the colours of musical tonality set against Leo’s monochrome lighting design; second, to use only the musical materials I recorded with the orchestra.
I had to keep one eye on the bridge and began looking at various time-lapse and hyper-lapse videos that helped to highlight an aspect of time that can’t be otherwise easily grasped. In the videos, throngs of people mill around and over Millennium Bridge, river traffic wends beneath, and the bridge sits proud and staid, of relative youth, part of a deeper time that exceeds our human lifespan but that contains the buildings and infrastructure that we each rely on day-to-day. I began to shape the piece to reflect these two types of time: short bursts of sound scurrying amongst and over the slower, more stable materials, together describing the overarching harmonic structure of the piece.

Illuminated River (Millennium Bridge)

X Giaime Pintor: "una giovinezza pallida e furente" (musiche originali dall'omonimo sceneggiato radiofonico Rai)

Nebbia del Tempo

Nebbia Del Tempo

Live recording of the world premiere performance at City, University of London on 25.02.20.

John Croft
Sextet (2020)

Explore Ensemble:

Taylor MacLennan, flutes
Alex Roberts, clarinets
Emmanuelle Fleurot, piano
David Lopez, violin
Morag Robertson, viola
Cecilia Bignall, cello

John Croft: Sextet

Eighteen years after they called it quits as a working band, 2013 finds the original members of Medicine reunited and proudly offering a newly recorded LP on Captured Tracks. 'To The Happy Few' LP/CD/MP3 will be out everywhere August 6, 2013. 

Medicine // Long As The Sun (OFFICIAL SINGLE)

A short piece for solo piano composed in 2019 by Jonah Chaffin.

Internal Sunshine

Two Movements for Saxophone Quartet (2020) Composed by Jonah Chaffin and performed by ~Nois

Just Before Dawn

Charlotte Botterill

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