Sound art, spoken word

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)

King Henry is a short story written by me in response to the traditional 'loathly lady' ballad, King Henry, which I recorded as You Are Wolf on my album hare // hunter // moth // ghost (2023, Firecrest Records). I reinterpreted the song into my story as a queer ghost/love story, and repurposed some of the musical material to accompany the song. I read and produced the story.

King Henry short story with music

A walk around the People's Park in the centre of Zhengzhou, which was full of activity on a Saturday afternoon.

Ping pong, traditional performers, karaoke, rollercoasters and lots of people dancing to some Chinese ska.

Kerry is a Musician in Residence in China with the British Council/PRS for Music Foundation. She is visiting the Henan region, mostly based in Zhengzhou, from February 25th-March 31st. She is making work based on the trickster fox in European and Chinese folklore.

Find out more at fox-pop.com

People's Park, Zhengzhou

Graininess and Sheen was made while I was Composer in Residence at Handel House Museum in London (2010-12). I spent time recording interviews with the volunteers at the House, and recording myself playing the three keyboard instruments there as well as other sounds in the House. Every sound you hear comes from the House.

www.kerryandrew.net

Graininess and Sheen

Sounds of Fair Isle chosen, recorded and curated by the children of Fair Isle Primary School, under the guidance of Kerry Andrew - "Half-Island Half-Bird" project, Fair Isle August 2016

Our Fair Isle Sounds

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

Yerbury Primary School play their version of Composer in Residence 2010-12 Kerry Andrew's 'Screech', live at St. George's Church, Hanover Square, London on February 26th 2013.

The piece is part of a suite for recorder quintet Consortium 5 called 'badluck birds', and was commission by Handel House Museum. 'Screech' exists as a graphic score comprising 52 flexible fragments which can be played in any combination and order.

'Screech' is old regional British name for the mistle thrush. It was believe that these birds were bad luck because they sang lustily just before, and throughout, storms.

You can compose your very own video-composition version of 'Screech' at screech.handelhouse.org

handelhouse.org
consortium5.com
kerryandrew.net

Screech - Yerbury Primary School

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

Sound art, spoken word

Kerry Andrew Composer