Christopher Mayo - It Could Be You Or You Or You
For solo harp
Performed by Zsuzsanna Szilágyi

For more details and score: https://www.ram.ac.uk/multimedia/it-could-be-you-or-you-or-you

About 200 PIECES:

As part of its Bicentenary celebrations, the Royal Academy of Music embarked on an ambitious project, inviting 200 composers to write 200 new works for solo instrument or voice. The recordings and scores for these works, written for every principal study instrument taught at the Academy, are now available, creating a new library of varied contemporary works by many of the world’s leading composers.
ram.ac.uk/200-pieces

It Could Be You Or You Or You

Mayo - It Could Be You Or You Or You

30 second previews of all the tracks on our debut compilation, Goliard Recordings - I, available only through Bandcamp.

Goliard Recordings - I - Preview

For piano (singing)

Acoustic and electric violins, recording & programming by Ellie Wilson
Additional recording, programming and bass by Thom Ashworth

'Halyard' written and recorded at Imogen Holst's cottage, Aldeburgh, Suffolk (August 2015)

All rights of the manufacturer and of the owner of this recorded work reserved.
Unauthorised public performance, broadcasting, and copying of this recording prohibited.
℗ & © 2017 Ellie Wilson

Halyard

Acoustic and electric violins, programming and percussion by Ellie Wilson
Mix, master and additional programming by @thomashworth. 

https://elliewilson.bandcamp.com/releases

All rights of the manufacturer and of the owner of this recorded work reserved. Unauthorised public performance, broadcasting, and copying of this recording prohibited. ℗ & © 2017 Ellie Wilson

Delta

Gold leaf

Aaron Parker, composer
Performed by Alarm Will Sound

Live at the Mizzou International Composers Festival, July 29, 2017

From the score: "...I saw happiness and pain in your eyes, and reflections of the Paradises lost and regained and lost again..." Jonas Mekas ("Song of Avignon," 1998)

atholhu

Christopher Mayo, composer
Performed by Alarm Will Sound

Live at the Mizzou International Composers Festival, July 29, 2017

Notes by the composer:
"Beast (for Hugo Ball)" is a setting of a sound poem of the same name by Canadian poet bpNichol (1944-1988) which was originally released on cassette in 1971. The poem is a tribute to German poet Hugo Ball (1886-1927), author of the Dada Manifesto, co-founder of the Cabaret Voltaire and, as bpNichol so eloquently puts it, “more or less the daddy of sound poetry”.

Beast (for Hugo Ball)

Written for and performed by Emily Morse. Premiered November 2018 at the University of Victoria. Recorded December 2018 at the University of Victoria.
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Stages of our lives come and go along with the people and the things we choose to give our time to. Some people that we meet affect us profoundly and others only there for a moment. We change as people and we don't stay the same for too long, the world doesn't allow it. Life can feel like there is so much going on and then it passes. The beginning of something new only lasts so long as until we become acquainted. The end follows suit sometimes before we want it to. This is a piece about these moments.
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Photo taken by the composer

These Moments are Fleeting, for solo flute

Performed by Standing Wave

They Sing and They Clap and They Shout 
2019 | 12'

Commissioned by Standing Wave
for alto flute, bass clarinet, percussion, piano, violin, violoncello, and electronics

"They Sing and They Clap and They Shout" is based on the songs of Swedish-American labour activist Joe Hill (1879-1915). Hill was a member of the Industrial Workers of the World, an international labour union founded on principles of “revolutionary industrial unionism”, and he contributed numerous protest songs to their “Little Red Songbook”. In 1915, Hill was executed for murder in Salt Lake City after a lengthy and widely-publicized trial. The IWW—and many subsequent historians—have maintained that Hill was framed, and he has since been held up as a martyr for the labour movement. After his execution by firing squad, his ashes were divided into 600 packets and sent to various branches of the IWW and their allies. The ashes were marked with the epitaph: “Joe Hill murdered by the capitalist class, Nov. 19, 1915”. 

"They Sing and They Clap and They Shout" incorporates many of Joe Hill’s songs, or, more specifically, many performances of his songs. The piece is peppered with transcriptions of tiny fragments from performances by Joe Glazer, Cisco Houston, Harry “Haywire Mac” McClintock, Pete Seeger, Earl Robinson, Barbara Dane and, particularly, Swedish folk singer Finn Zetterholm (drawn from his 1969 album "Joe Hill på svenska"). 

Joe Hill travelled across America lending his voice and his songs to IWW strikes and protests. In 1912 he travelled to British Columbia where he joined the Fraser River railway strikes and composed several new songs specifically for the striking workers. These included “Where the Fraser River Flows” based on the then-popular tune “Where The River Shannon Flows” by James I. Russell. They Sing and They Clap and They Shout incorporates a recording of “Where the Fraser River Flows” by the great American folk singer and activist Utah Phillips, used here with the generous permission of his estate.

"They Sing and They Clap and They Shout" takes its title from Joe Hill’s most famous song “The Preacher and the Slave” in which he coined the phrase “pie in the sky”:

Long-haired preachers come out every night
Try to tell you what's wrong and what's right
But when asked how 'bout something to eat 
They will answer in voices so sweet

You will eat, bye and bye
In that glorious land above the sky
Work and pray, live on hay 
You'll get pie in the sky when you die.

"They Sing and They Clap and They Shout" was commissioned by Standing Wave.

They Sing and They Clap and They Shout

Composed in 2020.
Commissioned by 840 Series, for their 5th anniversary concert, 
with funds provided by Arts Council England, Richard Thomas Foundation, Hinrichsen Foundation and RVW Trust.
Performed by Juliet Fraser (soprano), Colin Alexander (cello), Stephanie Tress (cello) and Peteris Sokolovskis (cello).
Live recording of 1st performance, at Cafe Oto, London on 
31 January 2020.

They Sing and They Clap and They Shout

Christopher Mayo

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