Television continuity poses (2016/2020, version for violin, ensemble, audio)

Fontana Mix Ensemble, Bologna, November 2021

Hollow propranolol séance (II)

Excerpts of 'Phant Heap Render' (2022).
Commissioned by the London Sinfonietta. Premiere at Queen Elizabeth Hall, December 2022.

Phant Heap Render

'As if ascending' was written for the British Museum to accompany the series of ancient Greek statues, Three Nereids, depicting one’s ascension from earth to heaven. During these three short pieces, the ensemble plays independently of one another either as soloists or as duos, before fleetingly crystalising as an ensemble in the final bars. 

As if ascending (excerpts from 1st and 3rd movements)

R.I.P. CLUB MUSIC 2014

Études (excerpts)

A line, a curve, or figure (Orchestra) – Excerpts

These three short 'Études' take as their starting point the music of the classical era. I have always been struck by moments in the music of this time that become nothing short of obsessive over their material, with composers continually breaking down and repeating fragments of melodies as they are gradually variated, or emphatically reiterating cadences to mark the final bars of the work. 

This piece focuses in on this idea and attempts to present a series of small musical moments which act almost like static objects, placed within a constantly shifting perspective through the play of real or imagined repetitions and variations.

The piece was commissioned by the Manchester Camerata and premiered in May 2015.

Score: http://files.cargocollective.com/374343/E-tudes--Total-score-.pdf

Études

A line, a curve, or figure

Score: http://files.cargocollective.com/374343/Lung--total-score-.pdf

London Symphony Orchestra & Daniel Harding
Barbican, 25th September 2016

'Almost everything that happens in Jack Sheen’s piece is there in its first few bars. Rather like an Alexander Calder mobile, in which there is no foreground or background, and in which every element is equal to every other, Lung has been written without narrative or dramatic incident, in the usual sense of the terms, but as an object to be slowly considered from every angle.
 
But this is not to say that everything that happens can be heard in those first few bars. Sheen’s piece may be flat in one sense, but – again like Calder’s mobiles – it also has great depth of field, with layers of music rolling over each other to bring different elements in and out of view. Sheen divides his orchestra into independent groups that cross the traditional family barriers. So harp and alto flute pair up to play imaginary folktunes; piano, flute, clarinet and trumpets sound slowly changing arpeggios; and horns, violas and double basses sustain a harmonic bed. Most distinctive of all is a heavily muted trio made up of the leaders of the 1st violins, violas, and cellos. Apart from four cues from the conductor, indicating points where they should start and stop, they act entirely independently of the rest of the orchestra, cycling through their own collection of melodic loops.
 
The title refers first of all to the slow expansion and contraction of breath, but it might also suggest the self-similar division of the airways into smaller and smaller paths, each division reflecting the structure of the whole. Or, again, a labyrinthine organism, alive through constant motion.

- Tim Rutherford Johnson'

Lung

for viola, prepared piano, and audio.
Commissioned and premiered by Stephen Upshaw.

Each one cancels the last

'Long pan requiem' is an open duration performance installation for six (or more) singers.

In many ways, the piece is a love letter to heterophony and the human voice. Split into two parts, ‘Long pan requiem’ is a setting of an alphabeticalised list of every syllable used in the ‘Introit’ of the Requiem Mass. Through simple ideas such as repetition, stasis and canon, the music functions like a sonic sculpture in an attempt to grind to a halt, or at other times totally freeze, the development of the music as time unfolds.

The singers are dispersed around a large, open, reverberant space, each facing a different angle rather than collectively directing their sound towards a single point; some face one another, others into walls or the corners of the space, or even outward and away from the rest of the ensemble. Each performer has an almost identical musical part, yet they sing independent of one another, slowly moving through their music at their own pace with each part governed by a unique set of repetitions and minuscule variations. 

The audience is free to walk around this constellation of choral sound, resulting in an ever shifting tapestry of individual voices in amongst the overall glow of the ensemble. This allows the listener to at times be up close an individual performer, with the idiosyncrasies and intricacies of that singer’s voice providing a particular perspective on the music, before moving off back into the crowd as the sound continues to cycle around itself and the space.

This recording is made up of three different audience member’s journeys through the installation, each of whom carried a small microphone to capture their route around the singers, in amongst the movement of people, the drafts coming in from outside, and the sounds of toddlers chasing one another.

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Many thanks to Foundation Royaumont for the opportunity to create this piece through their Voix Nouvelles programme, and to EXAUDI - Juliet Fraser, Lucy Goddard, Tom Williams, David de Winter, Simon Whiteley and Jimmy Holliday.

Long pan requiem

Jack Sheen (1993 - ) is a conductor and composer from Manchester.

JackSheen

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