Welcome to Britain, thousands of years ago. Walk through our ancient woods, our rivers and wetlands, our open meadows and dense forests, all thick with the sounds of nature. Hear the calls and movements of animals that roamed this landscape.

Every sound you hear was created using recordings taken at Wildwood Trust, a centre for the conservation of British wildlife that features both past and present species. Twenty-seven of these species appear in Our Ancient Woods:


Arctic Fox · Barn Owl · Boar · Common Crane · Eagle Owl · Eurasian Elk · Eurasian Lynx · Eurasian Otter · European Bison · European Brown Bear · European Polecat · European Wildcat · Fallow Deer · Grey Wolf · Konik Horse · Little Owl · Pine Marten · Raven · Red Deer · Red Fox · Red Squirrel · Red-Billed Chough · Reindeer · Rook · Soay Sheep · Tawny Owl · White Stork

Our Ancient Woods

"Trying to push this problem up the hill when it's just too heavy to hold."

Feat. Simon Baron (Vocals and Guitar)
Mixed by Jason Loveridge 

Let It Go - James Bay (Cover) w/ Simon Baron

Recorded by The Claret String Quartet 28/03/2017, ‘Ashes’ depicts the settling of smoke, and smouldering of flames in the aftermath of an aggressive Poi dance. A gradual reduction in pitch material reveals a whole-tone allusion to the theme from the third movement of Debussy’s String Quartet in G minor, before dying out altogether.

Ashes

French Horn - Ben Hulme
Violin - Michael Foyle 
Piano - Huw Watkins 

Performed at the DJ Recital Hall, Royal Academy of Music 24/04/17

Kepler-186f is named after and inspired by the first validated Earth-size planet to orbit a distant star in the habitable zone - a range of distance from a star where liquid water might pool on the planet's surface. The discovery of Kepler-186f confirms that Earth-size planets exist in the habitable zones of other stars and signals a significant step closer to finding a world similar to Earth.

Kepler-186f - for Horn Trio

Winner of NCEM's Young Composers Award 2017. Performed in May 2017 by The Ebor Singers. In September The Tallis Scholars will perform the piece again at Bridgewater Hall for broadcast by BBC Radio 3. 

Distance – implied through the title as well as the musical direction lontano (as from a distance) – provides the unifying theme for this piece. Sighing sopranos ethereally Ave (hail) from up above the ensemble, hardly embodying their words as if heard from offstage; and more expressive, climactic moments that come later always prove fleeting, quickly receding back to a uniformly veiled, muted dynamic. 
The sopranos’ sighing gesture is taken up by the tenor in the last section and the music dies away with Vale (farewell) echoing through the texture.

Prayer from Afar - SSATB

Riptide is about the ebbing and flow of sound, almost emulating the music of a synthesizer. The choir has undercurrents which flit between parts, focusing on texture, washing gradually through the piece

Performed with half sized choir (only one per part) in the Martin Harris Centre on 16th March 2018.

Riptide

recorded live at the Mystery and Wonder series in Montreal, QC.  Recording by the kind and tallented Mathieu Bélanger.

improvised and played on a hurdy gurdy by Wolfgang Weichselbaumer.  no effects or processing of any kind were used.

Solo At Mystery And Wonder

INTERVIEW & BROADCAST: https://www.francemusique.fr/emissions/creation-mondiale-l-integrale/ripped-tapestry-de-joel-jarventausta-laureat-du-concours-ile-de-creations-2019-diffusion-integrale-69955

Written in August - November 2018
Performed by Orchestre national d'Île de France, conducted by Jean Deroyer, Centre des bords de Marne, Perreux-sur-Marne, France - 21.02.2019

Recipient of 1st Prize in the 7th Edition of the Île de Créations Composition Competition.

Ripped Tapestry is built of five short movements, all responding to the famous anonymous medieval tune - l’homme armé - in either structural, harmonic or melodic ways. The title refers to the idea of an imaginary tapestry - depicting the armed man - destroyed, ripped apart resulting in an abstracted version of the original. The music follows in this vein.

Ripped Tapestry is a sister piece to Stonewalls (2017) which responds to a medieval plainchant too, however not from France but Finland.
___
Recording courtesy of France Musique & Radio France

Ripped Tapestry - for orchestra (2018)

Recorded in my living room 20/04/2020.  Guitar, Voice, Mugs, Cups and Cans all performed by the composer 

Dead Earth takes influence from the imagery in Konstantin's play in The Seagull, playing on ideas of a play inside a play one might say! The text is from the play (in a play) itself and draws the atmosphere and colour of our planet far into the future devoid of all life: Something so alien yet a frightening reality in the face of climate change.

Photo: The Amazon on fire.

Dead Earth

For soprano and chamber orchestra. 2011

After ‘He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven’ by W. B. Yeats



Glimmer (2011) for Soprano and Orchestra

Come and have a go if ya think yer avant-garde enough

Dead Earth

Dominic Matthews

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