live recording from All Saints, Blackheath on 09.07.2021
violin — Jessica Meakin
viola — Freya Hicks
‘cello — Evie Coplan
piano — Lewis Bell

written for The De Kooning Ensemble
fp — The De Kooning Ensemble, All Saints Blackheath (UK), 09-07-2021
sp — The De Kooning Ensemble, St. Mary’s Weymouth (UK), 27-10-2021

piano quartet (2021) [The De Kooning Ensemble]

Suite (2021)
world premiere, recorded at Wigmore Hall, July 2022

Explore Ensemble:
Taylor MacLennon, fl
Alex Roberts, cl
David López Ibáñez, vln
Morag Robertson, vla
Deni Teo, cello
Siwan Rhys, piano/kbd

Nicholas Moroz, audio recording/mixing

full video performance here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XlpdFkvEdLo

co-commissioned by Wigmore Hall and Explore Ensemble, supported by Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation

art: Maria Sibylla Merian — ‘Pineapple and examples of five insects’, from Merian's Drawings of Surinam Insects (1701-5)

Prerecorded sounds utilise three public domain field recordings:
1. Sounds of a pier being demolished near the entrance to the Terminal Island Prison and Deportation Center, Los Angeles, US. Rec. Steven Rowell, 2012.
2. School children sing national anthem in the morning before class in Pokigron, Boven, Suriname. Rec. Gerrit Kalsbeek, 2000.
3. Jarred fruit flies trapped in an empty, unrinsed wine bottle, Tartu, Estonia. Rec. Patrick Tubin McGinley, 2011.

Suite

for six players and electronics (2023). 

commissioned by Southbank Sinfonia and premiered in Anghiari, Italy in July 2023.

flute: Ellie Blamires
clarinet: Raymond Brien
bassoon: Hollie Redshaw
violin: Naomi Warburton
viola: Wanshu Qiu
cello: Miki Piszczorowicz

I was thinking about euphoria in pop music, that simple, single-minded ecstatic feeling you get from so many love songs. I found some vocal samples I liked and slowed them down and looped them, imagining each one as a kind of sculpture, gently rotating round and round in a neutral, dream-like space. Still euphoric, but frozen like TV static, repeating obsessively like prayer ritual.

1. I STILL FEEL
2. YOU'RE ALL I NEED
3. DON'T RUN FROM ALL THE THINGS YOU FEAR
4. THINKIN' ABOUT YOU, I'M THINKIN' ABOUT YOU
5. WE AIN'T GOT NO PROBLEMS, PROBLEMS, YEAH. I LET 'EM GO
6. TELL ME I'M YOURS
7. AH, JUST DON'T WALK AWAY
8. I DON'T WANNA LOVE YOU BUT I CAN'T SAY NO
9. I WANNA BE WITH YOU
10. YOU TOLD ME YOU WOULD NEVER, EVER FADE AWAY

BREAK-UP MANTRAS

two pianos
written for Yihan Chen and Maxime Trechsel
fp — Yihan Chen/Maxime Trechsel, Milton Court Concert Hall (UK), 29-09-2023

‘lee shore’ is a piece for two pianos created in collaboration with the Guildhall School of Music and Drama Keyboard Department. I worked with the excellent pianists Yihan Chen and Maxime Trechsel.

It was premiered alongside a performance of Meredith Monk’s ‘Ellis Island’ for two pianos with accompanying film. I selected a few harmonies from ‘Ellis Island’ — freeze frames — and arranged them freely. Whispers of Antonello de Caserta's ‘Amour m'a le cuer mis en tel martire’ also made their way in.

I was thinking about small, gentle gestures, lines, and listening through permeable textures.

If you would like to see the full video of ‘Ellis Island’ with ‘lee shore’ played attacca, please get in touch.

lee shore (2023)

Premiered at Iklectik on 26.11.23 by:

Eliza Woodward - flute
Darius Paymai - melodica
Lara Agar - violin
Reuben Esterhuizen - electric guitar

thanks to unfinished collective (esp. Lara Agar and Sylvia Lim) and Paul Newland.

situation after Paul

Luke Martin: guitar
James Creed: guitar

Recorded in my old room in Catford, London, overlooking the main road.

Included on "and there thy flight dissolved from view" with Luke Martin, available now via Nothing Comes to My Mind Right Now (Melbourne, Australia)

Two Guitars (2022)

EXAUDI

Cressida Sharp (soprano)
Jessica Gillingwater (mezzo)
Tom Williams (countertenor)
David de Winter (tenor)
Michael Hickman (baritone)
Simon Whiteley(bass)

James Weeks (conductor)

World premiere, live performance
Milton Court Concert Hall, London
22 May 2023

text:
haru (spring) yuki (snow)...

...the uncertainty was unbearable...
I felt only a strange sense of emptiness...
... and yet the trees were still bathed in bright summer sunlight...
... that intense sunlight in the trees...

words spoken by Yukio Mishima, NHK broadcast 1966

Spring Snow is the title of the first book in the final tetralogy written by Yukio Mishima before his death on Nov. 25th 1970.

Paul Newland: spring snow (2023)

Anonymous text:

Le Peintre passerait pour un homme incomparable 
Si par son art, il pouvait peindre ce mouvement 
Moi bien plus adroit et cent fois plus admirable
Je fais sans me mouvoir cet effet surprenant.

Performed by Lady Clare's Consort, conducted by Jasper Schoff, Croydon Minster, 3/2/24
Recording by Sam Hunt

Par Son Art: A Year of Song in Renaissance France

Par Son Art - for double SATB choir (2024)

for alto saxophone, bass clarinet & piano (2023)

Lucy Havelock - Saxophone
Hannah Shilvock - Bass Clarinet
Ben Nobuto - Piano

JOY REPLICA

Text by Olivia Bell -

Am I allowed to say
that I love this life and what I know within it?

Is that worthy of a song?

Today my front door is blue.
Tomorrow, it may be green
or else have no door at all, but a gate
or a grate
or a window
or four wheels and a handle
and an open road

Is that worthy of a song?

I love this life - even while
everything changes
people and places
no two socks the same

What a thing is a home
said the shell to the stone
and the snail to anyone who'll listen

And there is found in the root of things,
not the clink of keys
but the curious wish from a train's open door
to jump out and sing
as the last whistle sounds -
I love this life -

Workshop recording by Hannah Dienes-Williams (Soprano) and Gregory May (Piano)

Not a song about home - for Voice and Piano (2024)

Recorded at the Lemon Tree in Aberdeen, Scotland, as part of an Ivor Cutler tribute night held soon after he passed away.

Phonic Poem (Ivor Cutler) - Live at the Lemon Tree

composer and performer based in london @ gsmd

situation after Paul

reuben esterhuizen

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