for chamber ensemble, electronics, and lighting

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this piece is inspired by the devastating beauty of nacreous clouds. these clouds are both very rare and hauntingly beautiful, with luminous pastel colors streaking across the sky. 

despite their beauty, these clouds are irrevocably harmful to the atmosphere. while their beauty comes from the diffraction of light as it passes through tiny ice crystals in the air, their appearance acts as a catalyst for the reactions of toxic chemicals that deplete the ozone layer and contribute to the ozone hole in the antarctic. 

this piece is a meditation on the beauty and destruction of the world we’re making. 

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premiered by collective lovemusic at Paine Hall at Harvard University April 28, 2023

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performed by collective lovemusic:
Emiliano Gavito - bass flute
Adam Starkie - bass clarinet
Emily Yabe - viola
Christian Lozano - e-guitar

volatile horizon

volatile horizon (2023) | collective lovemusic

Program Notes:

We all inhabit familiar spaces. The most familiar of places, those that we feel most attached to and contained by, are fertile grounds for the unexpected.

In massive, cookie cutter style apartment complexes of the mid-20th and 21st centuries, we see individuals decorating identical spaces in myriad ways, expressing culture, tastes, and trends. If you enter different units in the same building, you have a feeling of a familiar space – a space which might appear different in the most superficial of ways, but at its core, is simply a replica of a space. How we interact with these familiar spaces is determined by the relationships that we have formed with our own space. We explore different spaces in a similar way, imbuing these spaces with simultaneous meaning and purpose.

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Performed by Open Union
Modular Synth: Peter Bell
Electric Guitar: Patrick Ellis

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Bio:

Paolo Griffin is a composer based in Toronto, Canada, whose music explores focused/unfocussed listening, repetition, generative composition, and microtonality, while maintaining a focus on close collaboration and creative spontaneity with the performers he works with.

Paolo is the Artistic and Executive Director of Freesound, a Toronto-based collective that consists of a core group of the city's most adventurous young musicians and interpreters of contemporary music. Freesound present concerts throughout the year with an interest in the work of emerging composers.

A fierce advocate of accessible arts and inclusive practices, Paolo is also the Managing Director of Xenia Concerts, a Toronto-based charity that focuses on presenting accessible concerts and musical events for autism and neurodiverse communities. Through his work with Xenia, Paolo has helped to shape such programs as Sound.colLAB - a collaborative project in which seven neurodivergent artists have co-created an original piece of music under the mentorship of
professional musicians.

2022-23 engagements include lectures at the Sibelius Academy in Finland, and the Tuckamore Chamber Music Festival's Widening the Circle initiative where he appeared as a mentor composer. Other events include premieres with the Continuum Ensemble, with saxophonist
David Zucchi in Toronto, and at the Aurore Renaissance Music Festival in Helsinki. Paolo's music has been featured in at festivals across Canada, including Ottawa Chamberfest, Toronto Summer Music, and Big Lake Arts Festival. His music can be heard in concert and on the radio
by performers and ensembles such as Continuum Ensemble (CA), Residentie Orkest (NL), The New European Ensemble (NL), Avanti! Chamber Music (FI), Thin Edge New Music Collective(CA), Duo Holz (CA), Freesound (CA), and more.

Paolo holds degrees from the University of Toronto and the Royal Conservatoire of the Hague where he studied with Peter Adriaansz and Martijn Padding. Other teachers have included Linda
Catlin Smith, Anthony Tan, Juhani Nuorvala, Chaya Czernowin, Mayke Nas, Matthew Whittall, Jukka Tiensuu, Rodney Sharman, Gary Kulesha, Nobert Palej, Huba de Graaff, Jan van de Putte,
Ana Sokolovic, Peter Ablinger, Christopher Theofanidis, Mario Garuti, Dmitri Tomozco, Amy Beth Kirsten, and Chen Yi.

Paolo's sits on the board of Musicworks Magazine. His work and research is supported by the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, and the Canadian New Music Network.

Paolo Griffin - Familiar Spaces (2022) - Live at Centrala, Birmingham


1) No.1 Triumph Over Tooth Decay
2) Acousmatic Interlude No.1
3) No.2 No Proper Breakfast
4) Acousmatic Interlude No.2
5) No.3 Because It’s More than Just Paper
6) Acousmatic Interlude No.3
7) No.4 Take a Shiny Object
8) Acousmatic Interlude No.4
9) No.5 Attracts Dust and Grime
10) Acousmatic Interlude No.5 
11) Ending 

This composition explore setting up a very simplistic ritual and then subverting it at the end of the composition. 

An Ontological Study of the Paradigms in Advertising Media within Capitalist Societies for string quartet

Premiere at Studio Annette by ensemble SEV, Maayan James (Saxophones), Nadav Lev (Guitars) and Dan Weinstein (Cello)  19-3-2025

In a Place Hard to Reach

This piece comes from the final movement of my larger string quartet An Ontological Study of the Paradigms in Advertising Media within Capitalist Societies for string quartet

The composition presents a strange ritual alternating very quiet music with lyrics scribbled down from half remembered adverts and things heard on the radio. 

The piece ends by dissolving into the either and a held chord slowly undulates. 

An Ending for string quartet

Obsession (2009/10) [MIDI Mockup]

Driven by visions of the jagged Californian coastline and the aquatic fauna intricately depicted in Ernst Haeckel's drawings, "Cove" whips the trio of musicians into a state of sweeping synergy and symbiotism.

Emiliano Gavito - flute
Adam Starkie - clarinet
Sophie Wahlmüller - viola

Cove [live recording]- David Bird + collective lovemusic

Track from my album 'Embodied' 

Re - released for my friend Luke Deane who did production, played the Melodica solo. 

Christine Cornwell on Violin. 

Flower Of My Eye

Lomond (2020): Guildhall Experimental Music Marathon; London; 2025

performed by Maulwerker
Ariane Jeßulat, Henrik Kairies, Christian Kesten, Katarina Rasinski, Tilmann Walzer, Steffi Weismann - voices

July 6, 2025
Großer Wasserspeicher, Berlin

madrigali guerrieri. libro II (2025) for six voices

Using MuBu, I chopped up I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For into a dense collage of tiny fragments which I improvised with in Max/Spat/MuBu and then pieced together in Reaper.

I made this for the Chaire Supersonique project i did in collaboration with IRCAM and the Beaux-Arts de Paris.

Big nod to Negativland here!

I STILL haven't found what I'm looking for (BINAURAL)

Open Union is an experimental music duo made up of composer-performers Peter Bell (modular synthesiser) and Patrick Ellis (electric guitar) based in Birmingham and London.

Described by the treasured composer Howard Skempton as being, ‘sometimes subtle and unstable; sometimes rich and dense’, the duo aims to build up strong collaborative relationships to create new verbal and text based works. Their current collaborators are Christine Cornwell, Wilson Leywantono, May Chi, Paolo Griffin and Seán Clancy.  

The duo have performed across the UK at events such as Ealing Extranormal, AMOK, Don't Mind Control, Birmingham Modular Organisation and CODA Festival. In 2025, they supported Passepartout Duo at Centrala Space, Birmingham as part of their UK Tour, and in 2023, undertook a mini tour of The Netherlands as part of the Sounding Here concert series, where they performed at Splendor in Amsterdam and Batavierhuis in Rotterdam.

In July 2025, they co-hosted a portrait concert with saxophonist David Zucchi featuring music by Paolo Griffin at the Hundred Years Gallery.

Paolo Griffin - Familiar Spaces (2022) - Live at Centrala, Birmingham

Open Union

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