This work follows the striking imagery in Psalm 29:

Ascribe to the Lord, you heavenly beings,
    ascribe to the Lord glory and strength.
Ascribe to the Lord the glory due his name;
    worship the Lord in the splendour of his holiness.

The voice of the Lord is over the waters;
    the God of glory thunders,
    the Lord thunders over the mighty waters.
The voice of the Lord is powerful;
    the voice of the Lord is majestic.
The voice of the Lord breaks the cedars;
    the Lord breaks in pieces the cedars of Lebanon.
He makes Lebanon leap like a calf,
    Sirion like a young wild ox.
The voice of the Lord strikes
    with flashes of lightning.
The voice of the Lord shakes the desert;
    the Lord shakes the Desert of Kadesh.
The voice of the Lord twists the oaks
    and strips the forests bare.
And in his temple all cry, “Glory!”

The Lord sits enthroned over the flood;
    the Lord is enthroned as King forever.
The Lord gives strength to his people;
    the Lord blesses his people with peace.

- Psalm 29

Image by Johannes Plenio

The Voice of the Lord Thunders over the Mighty Waters! - Kirsten White - Royal Academy Workshop

These two miniatures have undergone several processes of “translations" - some (but not all) of their musical material began in a piece I composed several years ago, which I desired to re-cultivate under different circumstances. Sparse but with a tense energy, they are inspired by Italo Calvino's "Invisible Cities," which are desolate but contain a distinct sense of hope and remain open-ended. I see this piece as both a source of rejuvenation and an ongoing process to continue into the future.
— HAB

Bailey Wantuch, violin
14 November, 2024
Schulich School of Music, McGill University, Montréal, Québec
Lorenzo Paniconi, recording and mixing 
Image: Invisible Cities (cover), Italo Calvino; Vintage Classic edition (Penguin)

Book of Hidden Cities (i, ii) (2024)

Isaac Shieh: Eclipse (2024)
For natural horn quartet (or modern horn quartet)

Composed for Ann Louise Wall.

Shieh: Eclipse, for Natural Horn Quartet (2024)

This is my sonic interpretation of Surrealist artist Emmy Bridgwater's painting 'The Fountain'. This track combines acoustic, choral and modular synthesiser sounds to capture the otherworldly nature of the painting.

'The Fountain' by Natalie Roe

Quintet for clarinet and string quartet (2024-5) 

Jonathan Leibovitz, clarinet | Quatuor Agate

Commissioned by Ipswich Chamber Music Society for their 100th Anniversary

Recorded live at Royal Birmingham Conservatoire, February 2025


***


"My Clarinet Quintet is cast in a single continuous movement. After a slow and sombre opening, the music gradually builds to a climax across a complex web of rising tempos, before settling downwards towards its point of departure and falling beyond. About half way through, there is a moment of radical change—all tension is dropped and a wash of memories comes flooding in. As the music flows towards its conclusion, from bar to bar it acquires an almost magnetic attraction towards one particular harmony into which, with utmost tenderness, it ultimately resolves. Very often the music flickers and crackles, rather like an old black-and-white film. 

"As I was composing the piece, I read several novels by the Korean writer Han Kang, who received the Nobel Prize in October. Her tender and extremely pointed use of language (often embodying deeply felt emotion with immense restraint) inspired me to treat each note with equal intensity and care."

Clarinet Quintet (2024-25)

"The Heavens declare the glory of God. Skies proclaim the works of His hands. Day after day they pour forth speech, night after night they reveal knowledge. They have no speech, they use no words, yet their voice goes out into all the earth." - from Psalm 19

Composed by Kirsten White

Soli Deo Gloria

Commissioned by the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra for a concert series in the StarDome observatory devised by Kirsten White - accompanied by spectacular projections of space.

Performers (from the APO):

Miranda Adams (violin 1), Charmian Keay (violin 2), Benjamin Harrison (viola), Ashley Brown (cello).

Performed in September, 2024.

The Heavens Declare The Glory Of God! - Mvt 4 - The Sun - Live StarDome Performance

Isaac Shieh: Pulsar (2025)
For natural horn and harp

Audio from the world premiere performance in the Angela Burgess Recital Hall, Royal Academy of Music on 24th June, 2025

Natural Horn: Isaac Shieh
Harp: Hannah Runting

Shieh: Pulsar (2025)

World Premiere, 7.17.25
Jennifer Gersten, violin
Hannah A. Barnes, electronics
Scholes Street Studio, Brooklyn

“Caminante, no hay caminos, hay que caminar.”
—anonymous inscription on a Spanish monastery
“In my beginning is my end.... In my end is my beginning. —T.S. Eliot, “East Coker”
The paths one takes are rarely, if ever, clear and straightforward. clouded winding paths reflects upon the above mantra, which has guided me for several years, as well upon as the circumstances surrounding the composition of the piece and the physical recovery of both myself (before the composition) and my collaborator, Jennifer Gersten. After an injury necessitated a drastic change in how Jennifer played the violin (taking up an improvisation practice with the violin on her lap), creating uncertainty around performance possibilities, I was eager to continue this collaborative project, finding a connection between her situation and my own years of chronic scoliosis-related back pain as a young woman.
Before intensive physical therapy, which led to significant and lasting positive change, I had to adapt and limit certain activities for years as a teenager and young adult. In clouded winding paths, I took an adaptive approach to violin writing, which led to certain discoveries in our collaboration that I would not have found otherwise—wispy harmonic sounds that come from inserting a knitting needle between the strings; or different approaches to overpressure or molto sul tasto bowing that are only possible with the violin positioned horizontally; and so on. As Jennifer was able to return to playing in the “traditional” position, in the finished piece, these adaptive materials are present in the electronics, which augment or contrast with what takes place in the live violin. This adaptive playing also influenced materials and development in the “traditional” position, which is modulated by the filtering and delays within the live electronics.
At the heart of the piece is a complex network of material and textural relationships, which includes polyphony between the solo violin and its fixed electronic counterpart. Materials and structures that are created and used in rigorous manners (including a thirteen-note microtonal tone row) come into contact with messy, unpredictable materials and processes. While some of these paths were determined at the outset, many were illuminated along the compositional process and could not have been anticipated at the origin of the journey.
clouded winding paths, which pays homage to Luigi Nono, was composed for and is dedicated to Jennifer Gersten. It is a cousin to my piece for electric guitar, Negative Capability (2020).
— HAB

Poster/thumbnail design by Jennifer Gersten.
All fixed media recordings by Jennifer Gersten.

clouded winding paths (2025, world premiere)

"Selenetrope" is a short study on bow nuance and timbral shading. Composed over three days during the 2025 Darmstadt Summer Courses in close collaboration with violinist Karl Jõrgi, the miniature explores fragile, unstable materials at the threshold of sounding. I want to express my gratitude to Karl for his fantastic collaboration and sensitive playing, and to mentors Rebecca Saunders and Sarah Saviet for both creating the environment for this collaboration as well as providing guidance on detail and notation.
A “selenetrope” is a mythical plant which blooms in the presence of moonlight.
-- HAB

*Headphones recommended; any background noise is part of the Darmstadt Experience.

31 July 2025
Darmstadt, Hesse, Germany
Karl Jõgi, violin

Selenetrope (2025, world premiere)

Hailing from New Zealand, Isaac is a London-based hornist; specialising in historical and contemporary performance. Regarded as one of his generation’s leading exponents on period horn playing and an ‘era-defining’ musician, his work takes him around the globe; exploring repertoire and instruments from early 18th Century through to the present day.

Shieh: Eclipse, for Natural Horn Quartet (2024)

Isaac Shieh

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