An uplifting and beautiful piece for unaccompanied four part choir, set to a poignant and hopeful text by Alfred Lord Tennyson, performed by The Choir Of Christ Church Chelsea.

In Memoriam (Ring Out Wild Bells) Performed By The Choir Of Christ Church Chelsea

This shadow,
intangible, ethereal, ephemeral
in unfluctuating symmetry

A shimmer of the sea
the glistening abyss
an eerie sunrise

A wingless bird
taking Flight

Taking flight explores identity, with subtle semitone and microtonal dissonances creating a sense of unease and insecurity. The shadow represents an inescapable reflection of oneself, always in unfluctuating and inescapable symmetry. There is a greater extent of improvisation for the performers as the piece progresses, expressing the freedom of a wingless bird taking flight.

Isabelle Freeman - Soprano
Hannah Dienes-Williams - Soprano
Megan Robinson - Flute
Mika Curson - Recorder
Sameer Aiyar-Majeed - Violin I
Lizzy Martin - Violin I
Sarah Bradley - Violin II
Siân Ellis - Violin II
Robert Jones - Viola
Julius Kiln - Viola
Max Todes - Cello
Hannah Wilkie - Cello
James Kiln - Double Bass
Greg May - Double Bass
Edwin Tang - Percussion

Conducted by Mary Offer
Text and Music © Mary Offer 2022

Taking Flight

For two electric guitars, performed by one guitarist (one guitar tuned a quarter-tone down).

Performed by Alkis Nicolaides at Contemporary Music Lab Cyprus, Nicosia, May 2022.

PAGEVAMPIRE (this house explores loneliness as ephemera)

a game for any four performers

image © Rivane Neuenschwander & Cao Guimarães

ant music, i. ligeti quartet

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

Anfang

Broken Superficiality (2024) for Ensemble and Fixed Media

Taking influence/inspiration from the 50-year continuation and negative effects of Neo-Liberalism that was first trialled in Chile in 1973, and then widely adopted by the UK and US under Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan (and the subsequent leaders), with a lot of other countries following suit. Moving increasingly towards a privatised, individualistic, and ultra-consumerist world with a lack of state-funded/public protected services/amenities, I find that gradually as a society we are losing ourselves, becoming broken and detached from community and instead are pursuing more superficial endeavours and objectives. Taking this into account, I have opted to use effects and timbres that were widely used in the 1970s and 80s as the core of the piece, pairing it with live instruments that sound ‘glitzy’ and techniques to that deviate/distort the instruments' pitch and timbre.

Performed by Ensemble Klang 
Performed at Cloud 9 in Tivoli Vredenburg, Utrecht as part of Gaudeamus Festival 2024
Recorded by Gaudeamus Festival
Mixed by Peter Bell

Image - 'Metropolis' by George Grosz (1917)


Broken Superficiality (2024)

'i'm fine' is a political protest piece for fixed media reacting towards the anti trans culture war that America is in the middle of. It is a sonic manifestation of my own struggles with gender dysphoria within our current political climate.

i'm fine

The Longest Night is a queer solstice carol that follows the journey of someone who arrives at a festive party alone, and walks out onto snow-covered streets hand-in-hand with someone new. Through an evening filled with joyful singing and dancing, a new, romantic connection is forged. This is a piece about the warmth, excitement and hope of falling in love at the darkest time of the year.

The piece was commissioned by The Sunday Boys and was premiered on 21st December 2024 in Manchester Cathedral as part of A Very Queer Christmas Our Solstice Night. It was conducted by Michael Betteridge. 

The Longest Night

Uckfield Concert Brass - Dawn Wisdom, by Emily Hazrati

Recorded by the Oxford Philharmonic Orchestra, 22nd February 2019.

Conductor - Dr John Traill

Settling - Oxford Philharmonic workshop recording

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

Emily Hazrati is a composer and educator based in London. Her music centres around environment, place and belonging; frequently informed by sounds and landscapes from the natural world, as well as ideas around breath, ritual, and circularity. She has a particular affinity to working with narrative and text, and is interested in collaborative, interdisciplinary ways of making art.

Emily is Oxford Song's Associate Composer for 2024-26, with premieres of her compositions at Oxford International Song Festival planned for 2025 and 2026. Current projects include writing for London Symphony Orchestra as one of their Helen Hamlyn Panufnik Composers 2024-25, a new work for The Marian Consort on the Royal Philharmonic Society’s 2025 Composers programme, and choral commissions for St Martin’s Voices and Vox Urbane. Emily has worked with ensembles and organisations including the BBC Singers, Royal Ballet and Opera, Ligeti Quartet, National Youth Choir and CHROMA ensemble, amongst many others. She has recently been developing her second chamber opera TIDE, commissioned by Britten Pears Arts, which received its first, sold-out performances at the Aldeburgh Festival 2022.

Emily’s music has received multiple broadcasts on BBC Radio 3, and performances in the UK, Canada, Germany, USA, Australia, and New Zealand. Her compositions have been released on NMC Recordings as part of their Young Composers 5 album, receiving critical acclaim from BBC Music Magazine. In 2024, she was awarded PRS Foundation’s The Open Fund for a new song project with Ella Taylor and Jocelyn Freeman, premiering in SongEasel’s 2024 ‘A Vast Obscurity’ series.

When not composing, Emily is Composition Tutor & Coordinator at Centre for Young Musicians (part of Guildhall Young Artists), and is a composer on Music in the Round’s WeCompose programme: an initiative bringing composition to KS3 and KS4 students across the country.

Settling - Oxford Philharmonic workshop recording

Emily Hazrati

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