CHAMBER MUSIC

A quintet for oboe, bassoon, horn, viola and double bass, 'shiftingsands' is inspired by the slow-moving sands of Spurn Point, Humberside, and the birdlife there. It was recorded at a Sound Inventors course in 2005 where I was assistant-teaching.

shiftingsands

This chamber trio (2004)for violin, piano and percussion was recorded by Black Hair at Dartington. 

It was inspired by a book I had as a child - a retelling of an Inuit story about a young boy, Ytek, who discovers some blood-red orchids that lead him into another, more summery, world.

ytek's orchid

'Fruit Songs' was originally written for the soprano Sarah Dacey and acoustic guitar. It has undergone other arrangements for chamber group (soprano, clarinet, violin, 'cello, piano and percussion) and for soprano and piano.

This version is sung by Jenny Duck-Chong with Janet Agostino on guitar, as part of the group Halcyon, a brilliant Australian ensemble who champion new music and have also given the Australian premieres of my works 'luna-cy' and 'ojo'. www.halcyon.org.au

They set five different poems about fruit!
I - Mango
II - Plum
III - Blackberry
IV - Cherry
V - Apple

'Kerry Andrew’s ‘fruit songs’…were playful, punning and admirably concise—not unlike a musical equivalent of the visual puns of the poetry of e.e. cummings.' Sydney Morning Herald, 2003

'Kerry Andrew’s ‘fruit songs’ …treat the voice as a circus acrobat treats a trapeze.' North Shore Times, Sydney, 2006

blackberry from fruit songs

'Fruit Songs' was originally written for the soprano Sarah Dacey and acoustic guitar. It has undergone other arrangements for chamber group (soprano, clarinet, violin, 'cello, piano and percussion) and for soprano and piano.

This version is sung by Jenny Duck-Chong with Janet Agostino on guitar, as part of the group Halcyon, a brilliant Australian ensemble who champion new music and have also given the Australian premieres of my works 'luna-cy' and 'ojo'. www.halcyon.org.au

They set five different poems about fruit! 
I - Mango 
II - Plum 
III - Blackberry 
IV - Cherry 
V - Apple

'Kerry Andrew’s ‘fruit songs’…were playful, punning and admirably concise—not unlike a musical equivalent of the visual puns of the poetry of e.e. cummings.' Sydney Morning Herald, 2003

'Kerry Andrew’s ‘fruit songs’ …treat the voice as a circus acrobat treats a trapeze.' North Shore Times, Sydney, 2006

apple from fruit songs

This theatrical chamber piece was written for 3 female voices, clarinet, trumpet, electric guitar, electric bass, vibraphone, electric piano, electric organ, and radio player. It was inspired by listening to lots of post-rock and a sound I heard a tube train make on the London Underground.

Its programme note is a poem:

It started late into the night, sitting on the Tube
caged in its hammer-glare 
the air filmy with sweat
drunks turning the seats to liquid.

Then the train curved on the rail.
It made a sound like light bending.

This piece should feel nothing like sitting on the Tube.
(KA)

This recording is from a live performance by The Chimera Ensemble.

late night radio (sleepmusic)

'THE, WHAT IS IT? THE GOLDEN EAGLE?', commissioned and performed by Icebreaker at Nottingham Lakeside.

I admit being a little terrified about writing this piece; almost all of the music that I have written professionally has included the voice. However, I treated it as a chance to experiment with mixing classical and leftfield pop styles in a way that I’ve always wanted to. I am a huge admirer of Anna Meredith’s, and was also thinking of David Lang and the bands Battles and Dawn of Midi as I was writing.

The piece is partly inspired by contemporary America, chiefly a recent road trip down the US West Coast and into Arizona, especially driving up to Joshua Tree National Park. The ridiculous vistas - big roads, wide skies and dramatic rock formations - gave me at least one of the main riffs. The title is from a transcript of the interview Donald Trump gave to the massed journalists of the New York Times in November 2016, when talking about his disapproval of wind farms in California. He couldn’t remember the name of a very well-known bird of prey, which he seemed to be attempting to say was in danger from getting caught in wind turbines, although it’s a little hard to tell from his meandering, grandstanding speech patterns. 

I’ve been known to write a piece or five inspired by birds, so halfway through writing this I realised that the wavering ’cello was essentially a golden eagle flying up and around a wind turbine (unhurt), before ideally swooping back down and pecking viciously at the next President. (Please note this was written before the inauguration.)

I am very grateful to Icebreaker for commissioning me.

Ice 202 Nottingham (22_02_17) [music only]

THE, WHAT IS IT? THE GOLDEN EAGLE? (Performed LIVE by Icebreaker)

The second movement of my piece written at Aldeburgh in 2011, 'Birdsong For Two Voices', for two pianos, loop station and speaker. This movement sets my own text, based on 'whisperingsong', a birdsong phenomenon when birds such as robins or blackbirds are in a state of arousal! Their beaks are often shut, but keep blurting out little bursts of fairly-formed song. I imagine that the acoustic first is the 'translation', or what the bird hears in his head, and the second looped half (freely collected live on the loop station and then manipulated by the other pianist) is what we might hear in the forest.

Birdsong For Two Voices II Whisperingsong

Commissioned by the Hebden Bridge Piano Festival and premiered at Waterfront Hall on April 27th, 2019

Written for (and performed here by) Rolf Hind 
and in memoriam Peter Maxwell Davies

2019 marks the centenary of the scuttling of the German fleet in the bay of Scapa Flow, Orkney. The narration (read by myself) was written after a short visit there in December 2018, and is also inspired by the wonderful scapaflowwrecks.com, where you can virtually visit the sites of the remaining sunken wrecks.

Scuttle

A still day. Low winter sun.
The mountains of Hoy. 
The soft hills on the mainland. 
The sound of sheep, and one end
of a faint rainbow hits Scapa Flow,
as if to say, here.

Come down, here. 
Deeper.
Deeper still.
What do you see?

Bodies. Long carcasses, 
lodged into the sea-bed.
Whale-like. Ribs. Steel ribs.
Huge twin rudders like fins.
An anchor chain lies curled,
guns hang upside down.
A strange, shattered world.
There are scattered boretubes 
and spurling pipes,
hawkers, spars and deck plates.

From the beach at Deep Dale, 
you would have seen them. 
From White Breast. Midland Ness. 
From the lighthouse at the Calf of Cava. 
The Calf of Flotta. The Barrel of Butter.

The sea is enamoured with them 
over time, brings jewels.
Sea lemons and brittlestars,
moon jellies and dahlia anenomes.
A bow is loaded with coralline seaweed. Sunstars.

So many colours on the salt-rusted metal.
Tangerine, dusk-pink, claret, 
buttercream, indigo, bubblegum. 

Look. An armoured deck is encrusted 
with seamats, shipworms and saddle oysters,
and there, over the rivets and from portholes, 
hermit crabs and rock lobsters and queen scallops:
things that scuttle.

Life.
The life that comes when men have finished sinking themselves.

Keeled, listed, lulled, enchanted.
These bones have their own songs now.

From ship to coral, from coral to seaweed,
From seaweed to fish, from fish to seal,
From seal to whale, from whale to the cold open air
and the silver stun of the sea.

Words by Kerry Andrew

Scuttle

'birdman's song' is for clarinet in A and loop station, from my large-scale chamber music-theatre work based on an Inuit myth, 'sedna stories'. It's also available as a stand-alone work.

It was developed with and written for the wonderful musician Matt Dibble, who performed it here in the live performance from 2005 at the Rymer Auditorium, University of York. Matt accidentally squeaked on the last loop and marvellously incorporated it into his improvisation.

Matt died in spring 2021, and the piece is dedicated to the memory of him, my dear friend, bandmate and colleague.

Birdman's Song

One movement from my second Handel House commission, called 'badluck birds' and inspired by the regional mythologies of British birds. 

'Scribblie' is a regional name for a yellowhammer; it was believed that the scribbly markings on their eggs had been made by the devil... I also used some saying about yellowhammers to give me some rhythms for the looped central section.

'badluck birds' was created with the aim of allowing the audience to have a part in the creation of the music. In Scribblie (heard here played by Consortium 5 at Handel House Museum), an audience member comes to the front and 'turns on/off' players as the piece runs along. I wrote this piece knowing that at any one time you might hear any combination of five parts!

There is a video webgame version of one of the other movements, Screech, where you can REALLY make your own piece. Check it out at: http://screech.handelhouse.org

kerryandrew.net
handelhouse.org
consortium5.com

Scribblie (for recorder quintet and audience member)

Work for string quartet and spoken word, exploring my relationship with my deaf ear and tinnitus. Commissioned by and peformed here by the Ligeti Quartet, with me reading my words.

Tinnitus Songs LIVE from Kings Place

Kerry Andrew is a composer, performer and author based in London. 
She specialises in vocal music and opera, choral music, folk, jazz, and community music. Choral and experimental work has been heard on BBC Radio 3, BBC Radio 4, 6Music and Classic FM and on national news channels. She won a British Composer Award in 2010 and two more for her chamber operas 'Woodwose' and 'Dart's Love' in 2014. She won her 4th for 'who we are' for the National Youth Choirs at the Royal Albert Hall. She was 2010-12's Handel House Composer in Residence. In 2017, she made her Proms debut with BBC Ten Pieces.

Her debut novel, Swansong, is out now: https://www.waterstones.com/book/swansong/kerry-andrew/9781911214229 and her second novel, SKIN, is published in February 2021.

Kerry performs as alt-folk artist You Are Wolf http://soundcloud.com/you-are-wolf; music can be heard and ordered here: https://youarewolf.bandcamp.com/

She performs with the award-winning vocal trio https://soundcloud.com/juicevocalensembleuk

She also performs with the jazz/classical/rock collective https://soundcloud.com/dollyman.

‘Stunning‘ Classic FM

‘Brilliant, Berio-like vocal effects…‘ The Times

www.kerryandrew.net

CHAMBER MUSIC

Kerry Andrew Composer