Film / Television

pf. Ensemble Modern
cond. Enno Poppe
premiere, Frankfurt, March 2020
contains a field recording by Vincent Duseigne of veal calves being separated from their mothers 
(2015, https://archive.org/details/aporee_30571_35170)
art: Egon Schiele, "Sawmill" (1913)

We are all okay

commissioned by Paul Layzell for the Choir of Royal Holloway

first performance: Choir of Royal Holloway and Rupert Gough on 26 January 2022 at the Chapel of Royal Holloway University of London, as part of a live BBC Choral Evensong broadcast

This is a live service recording from February 2022 at the Chapel of Royal Holloway University of London.

First Service: Magnificat

dandelion

RIOT Ensemble, cond. Aaron Holloway-Nahum 

Distat Terra Festival 2022

Tränen und Ozeane (2022)

A live recording extract from one of the premiere performances with European Union Youth Orchestra and Gianandrea Noseda, at Grafenegg Festival in August 2022. 

Nexus: a complicated series of connections between different things.

This piece was commissioned by EBU to commemorate the 250th anniversary of Beethoven’s birth. More specifically, to encapsulate the symbolic notion of ‘Beethoven’s Mirror’; a living composer reflecting and responding to the historical one.

Beethoven and his music is often connected to and associated with the Napoleonic politics of his day. Yet, there were other concurrent seismic political events in motion that were central to Europe. The Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves to the United States, which took effect in 1808, the same year in which Beethoven’s iconic Symphony No. 5 was completed and premiered, seems to be particularly poignant.

Nexus interweaves African Diasporic Shouts and Songs: Adam in the Garden; Brown Girl in the Ring; Deep River; Down in the River to Pray; Drive Ol’ Joe; I’ll Be So Glad; Raise a Ruckus; and Wade in the Water, within harmonic, motivic, and gestural characteristics of the first movement of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5 as an act of highlighting complex historical links that still affect us today.

Nexus [EXTRACT]

Emotional Whiplash

May song (2022)
six voices and prerecorded audio
Performed by Exaudi, at Exposure 2023, Milton Court, 22 May 23

Cressida Sharp, sop.
Jessica Gillingwater, mez-sop.
Tom Williams, counterten.
David de Winter, ten.
Michael Hickman, bari.
Simon Whiteley, bass

James Weeks, cond.

Text by Goethe (1771), trans. Lisa Jeschke & Lucy Beynon (in Jeschke, Anthology of Poems by Drunk Women, Materials, 2018 http://material-s.blogspot.com/2020/10/lisa-jeschke-anthology-of-poems-by.html.)

How beautiful shines 
To me, the nature! 
How the sun glows! 
How the mead smiles!

Blossoms penetrate 
From each branch 
And a thousand voices 
Out of the shrubbery

And joy, and joy 
From each breast. 
O earth, o sun,
O joy o lust!

O love, o love!
As golden, as beautiful 
As the morning clouds 
On those heights

You bless gloriously 
The fresh field
The blossoms’ steam 
The bountiful world.

O girl, girl
How I love you! 
Your eyes gaze! 
How you love me!

This is the way the lark loves 
Song and air
And morning flowers
The smell of heaven

How much I love you, 
My blood warmed
By you, for me, a youth, 
And joy and courage

For new songs
And dances
May you be happy eternally 
As long as you love me.

Prerecorded sounds include two field recordings of a wind turbine in Bernau bei Berlin, recorded by Peter Cusack, 2021.

Art: Unknown photographer, WT-Energiesystems Albertshof wind turbines, Bernau bei Berlin, c. 2020

Thanks to James Weeks and Exaudi, and to Paolo Carlotto and Nick Moroz for audio engineering assistance.

May song

Sitting Alone On Daiyu Peak (2020)

A setting of words by Richard Crashaw:

The world's light shines, shine as it will,
The world will love its darkness still.
I doubt though when the world's in hell,
It will not love its darkness half so well. Amen.

Performed by Guildford Cathedral Choir, conducted by Katherine Dienes-Williams, in Guildford Cathedral on 14/2/24
Recording courtesy of BBC Radio 3

Half so well - for SATB choir and organ pedals (2023)

composed by Martin Arnold (1997)
performed by Quatuor Bozzini

Contact; Vault

Music for short documentary Phyllida. 
Directed by Cosima Spender, produced by Dorothea Gibbs. 
Third Channel / Peacock Pictures / Hauser and Wirth

Strings, prepared piano, electronics.

Tracing a Line — from Phyllida, short documentary

EXAUDI

Juliet Fraser, Amanda Morrison (soprano)
Lucy Goddard (mezzo)
Tom Williams (countertenor)
David de Winter, Alastair Putt (tenor)
Simon Whiteley, Jimmy Holliday (bass)

James Weeks (conductor)

UK premiere, live performance
Milton Court Concert Hall, London
22 March 2019

'The backgrounds of the pieces are lists: lists of chords and lists of words. The elements of the lists are not arbitrary, but have loose connections and touch contents, emotions and continuations.

light 
fall 
breeze 

shade 
view 
trace 

birds 
flew 
south 

long 
late 
lost 

Last snow 
last bird 
last plaine 
last tune 
last loneliness 
last shadow 
last sadness 

'Just as the form of the chorale has a tendency towards the impersonal, I have tried to be unspectacular in the word lists, too, and to put it on the threshold of abstraction and figuration. It gives the piece a kind of intensity and sensuality that can be created with a few tones and subtle connections.'

Jürg Frey: Out Of Chorales (2018)

From Seahorse, feature documentary by Jeanie Finlay
Violins — Alex Parsons
Piano — Yshani Perinpanayagam
Accordion — Tara Creme

A Positive Result — Seahorse

CAVCD 477 - CINEMATIC CHOIR: FIRST CONTACT

GOLD ON THE HORIZON --- Large Choir Full Mix - evolv

From the feature documentary March for Dignity, directed by John Eames. 
Strings performed by Richard Curran 
Drums — Leo Sutherland

Tbilisi — March for Dignity documentary

Composer for concert, film/television and theatre
www.taracreme.com

A Positive Result — Seahorse

Tara Creme

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