for orchestra (variable size)
workshop recording from Silk Street Music Hall on 11.05.2021
played by Guildhall School musicians, conducted by Jack Sheen

dream hollow (2021)

A permutational piece for cello and piano, written while sitting on Rock-A-Nore beach in Hastings, East Sussex in 2021. 

Piano - Matt Geer
Cello - Alice Luddington

Rock-A-Nore (cello and piano, 2021)

A short piano piece written for British composer Matthew Lee Knowles

For Matthew

Space Dikhotomia 
[2005, premiered 2006]

This was performed in London and Canterbury, I think this recording is the London version (Guildhall New Music Ensemble)

fl, ob, cl, bsn, hn, trp, trb, mar, pf, antique cymbals, str

Unknown Album (10/05/2006 07:45:58)

Space Dikhotomia [2005]

Composed in 1996. 
Dedicated to Anton Lukoszevieze.
Studio recording made in 2004.
Apartment House: Andrew Sparling (clarinet), Anton Lukoszevieze (cello), Sarah Walker (electric organ).
From 'Chamber Works 1992 - 2009' (Another Timbre at74x2)

Chamber Works 1992 - 2009 [Disc 1]

Riis

Combinatorial work for two pianos written in Aug/Sep 2021. This composition is inspired by a quote by Bryn Harrison:
"It’s like looking at the hands on a clock...you can’t see that something is in motion but there’s an invisible transformation taking place. I wanted the shifts to be very subtle, for the listeners to arrive somewhere else without realising the journey they’ve made." - Bryn Harrison on shifting light (2006)

(f/h)our hands (piano duet, 2021)

Intention, protention and retention are the defining features of Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology of temporality. Consciousness begins with the live experience that occupies the framework of the present in every sense. Without any obstruction, this actual experience immediately transforms into the past. The further forward you travel, the further away from the present nexus you travel, and the fainter the retention becomes. At a point in time, far away from the source-point of the present, retention is lost. At this point, only memory will bring back the experience into the human consciousness. My work explores the way in which static textures lead to a fluctuation in the listener’s temporal consciousness; time may move slower, or faster. Beginning with a thick and static texture of individual moments that the listener’s ear will move between, the work ends with a static plane where the listener’s memory will recall textures from the first movement.

Intention - Retention - Protention (for 6 instruments and soprano, 2021)

Ham is a space-face spaced out homage to the first great ape in Space, Ham, named after the Holloman Aeromedical Laboratory, who safely returned from Space in January 1961.

"he had a smile on his face -- 
but," said the experts,
"that's a sign of great distress,
that's a sign of great distress"

Dedicated to Laurence Crane on his Birthday. 

Live Recording at St Giles Cripplegate 18/10/21

Performers: 
Ben Smith - Piano 
Patrick Hegarty - Sampler
Matt Geer - Organ
Christian Drew - Guitar 
Darius Paymai - E. guitar

Jab is dedicated to Adam Łukawski, a gifted composer who changed many things about my approach to life. He himself is carrying out important research which implements both Shepard tone principles and Artificial Intelligence technologies. Every time we talk some bright spark of an idea always floats into view, like "bitcoin" or "compositional NFT", honestly every conversation is pretty wild. This piece would have taken a very different course if not for many of our perspective-altering conversations. Jab is directly influenced by many of Adam’s ideas.

Jab is a simultaneous expression of turmoil and joy. It's my life between 03/19 and 12/20. In this time, I experienced frustration, anger, fear, rejection and loss. At the same time, there was laughter, exhilaration, discovery and rebirth. I met people that I love dearly. While sketching, composing and extensively recomposing, I constantly questioned what exactly I wanted to deliver. Was it a joke or swear? A punch line or a sucker punch? Ultimately, I couldn’t decide. But maybe that's what this piece is and what the rest of my work is increasingly becoming, the chaos of indecision.

The piece is built on six contrasting gestures. The first is a cluster that peels away to reveal diatonic harmonies and then a scale (such gestures are found in Dutilleux, Nielsen and Schumann). The second is a twinkling two part counterpoint. The third is a bulldozer in a China shop, a spectacle which misdirects. The fourth is a slow, ornamental, folk (in the broadest sense of the word) Finnisy-an melody with morphs into two. The fifth, at bar 33, is a Shepard tone texture. The Shepard tone textures in particular are inspired by Adam’s research. The sixth and last gesture consists of lithe arpeggiations which excite ghostly harmonics from strings sustained in the sostenuto pedal. These seemingly appear from nowhere. Across the piece I combine and recombine these gestures; push them through Risset accelerations and decelerations; throw and muddy them. 

Jab was commissioned by the Park Lane Group through the Ralph Vaughan Williams Trust. Initially, Dominic Degavino, a Park Lane Group young artist, was due to premier the piece. However, because of the coronavirus pandemic, the Park Lane Group were unable to mount a premier of the piece. Instead, here we have the INDOMITABLE Ben Smith, grounding, pounding, flying, grappling, doing sik kikflips, jumping, running, sitting still, doing sensitive line drawings, sometimes all at the same time. Ben you are a literal force of nature. The scope of your abilities is literally terrifying. Sometimes when I look at you and your work, I feel I'm staring into the heart of Vesuvius.

I can't thank Ben enough for the time, energy and dynamism he's put into Jab, thank you Ben! Thanks also to my supervisors Professor Julian Anderson and Malcolm Singer, who asked me to draft, redraft and constantly questioned me: what do you want to hear? This piece would not be without them.

Jab - for solo piano

Aleksandra Ivanova - piano

Recorded from the Musical World of America and Bulgaria Concert:
      A program presented January 14, 2020  
      Chamber Hall Bulgaria, Sofia

This suite for piano is in 3 movements with each suggesting and abstract image: 
I. Koto Strings Resounding in Blue Sky, 
II. Dewdrops Fall--Memories Ring Upon a Moonlit Pond, 
III. Dragonflies in Furious Flight. 

This work was premiered in 2003 in an alumni concert program sponsored by the New England Conservatory of Music and performed by Boston area pianist Miyuki Otani.

Three Japanese Images for piano

Composed in 2020.
Commissioned by 840 Series, for their 5th anniversary concert, 
with funds provided by Arts Council England, Richard Thomas Foundation, Hinrichsen Foundation and RVW Trust.
Performed by Juliet Fraser (soprano), Colin Alexander (cello), Stephanie Tress (cello) and Peteris Sokolovskis (cello).
Live recording of 1st performance, at Cafe Oto, London on 
31 January 2020.

European Towns

mattgeer.co.uk | composer and organist 
time-consciousness, systems, meditation and completism | phd student (belfast), bmus (guildhall, laurence crane) | third order of the society of st francis

Intention - Retention - Protention (for 6 instruments and soprano, 2021)

Matt Geer

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