GLOWROGUES
Manchester band soon to AWAKEN

Sam Healey // Alto
Aaron Diaz // Trumpet & FX
Mark Francis // Trombone
Dan Brew // Guitar
Ben Watte // Keys
Jamie Brewster // Bass
Jim Molyneux // Drums

The All Night Lights

Recordings were made at the park next to my flat on the 19th and 20th of August 2023. The title references the fact I was, at the time, getting ready to sell my flat and move somewhere new. 

Both the notated composition and the fixed media part were completed shortly after. The fixed media part features recordings of children (including a wonderfully curious girl who kept on playing with my recording equipment), me striking the top of a metal bin with my hands as if it were a drum, and a man playing basketball on his own. 

The notated piano part consists of 23 chords. The numbers associated with these chords (23, 9, 6 ,8) and the common pitch (G) are derived from my address, postcode, and the fact my flat is on the 6th floor of the building.

This is just a demo recording, and will eventually be replaced by a new piano performance, recorded professionally. If you would like to play it, feel free to contact me and I will send you the materials.

Goodbye Bins And Benches

BBC Commission, First Night Of The Proms 2015, BBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Sakari Oramo. World Premiere: July 17th 2015
I encountered Max Ernst's Dadaville (1924) at Tate Liverpool by chance and was immediately intrigued; it looked like a painting but is actually a sculpture of a seemingly impenetrable iron wall that is in fact made of a cork so fragile that it is kept behind glass for fear it might crumble if touched. Above the ‘wall’, we observe what may be blue sky and white clouds. The sculpture is rich in ambiguity.
Dadaville lasts about seven minutes and is scored for an orchestra that includes extensive percussion and a baritone saxophone. It begins with a muted violin melody that in various incarnations permeates the entire piece. An energetic section follows based around the notes D and A; notes which stubbornly pop up throughout irrespective of context and environment (and where else might the notes D and A live other than Dadaville?). A gritty, aggressive segment gravitating around D flat and A flat (D and A at Baroque pitch?) ensues. A genial woodwind/celesta bridge leads to a dreamlike statement of the opening melody (solo violin/cello then flute/horn) that in turn introduces the tuba’s infinitely variable 9-bar ground-bass-like figure (or groove if you prefer) which passes from instrument to instrument to the end of the piece (under the bonnet, the number 9 and its multiples have structural and symbolic significance –Dadaville [9 letters] is 180 bars long, for example). Whilst writing Dadaville, I often pondered what else (another D and A?) might live behind this iron-cork wall. The penultimate bar fleetingly hints...
Full and Study Score available from Cadenza Music from whom performance materials can be hired.  https://cadenza-music.com/index.php

Dadaville

Premiere Performance
The Edinburgh Quartet
City Halls, Glasgow 26th May 2015

This Recording
The Edinburgh Quartet
The Queen's Hall, Edinburgh 27th May 2015

Violins: Tristan Gurney | Gordon Bragg
Viola: Fiona Winning
Cello: Mark Bailey

Silent Shores is my second string quartet, and was commissioned by the Edinburgh Quartet with funding from Creative Scotland.
I have always had a real affinity with the Isle of Arran in the Firth of Clyde. I first visited when I was just six weeks old, and have returned at least two or three times a year ever since. I am always struck by its immense beauty, staggering ruggedness, untamed nature and wild, unpredictable weather, and I have spent countless hours in its many mountains and glens.

In early 2015 I made a very foggy crossing on the ferry from Ardrossan to Brodick (the main town on Arran), with the fog only lifting towards the end of the voyage to reveal Arran shrouded in thick, heavy mist. There was a real atmosphere of stillness: no wind, no calling of the birds, and barely any waves; their absence leaving me to simply absorb the island in its half-visible, blurred image.

Silent Shores loosely recounts this early-morning image of Arran. The work is constructed of three adjoined, yet distinct, sections. The first section features a slow-burning, tense violin melody that is continuously charged with energy from the accompanying ensemble. This melodic material is deliberately slow to expose itself, leading into a capricious, volatile middle episode with scurrying passages and angular, jagged interruptions. The energy is quickly dissipated, and fragments of the earlier melodic material are revisited in the final section. However, the material found here is hazier, disfigured, or damaged in many respects. T.H.

Text, image, and music © 2015 Tom Harrold

SILENT SHORES, for string quartet | The Edinburgh Quartet | 2015

Blood and Faeces (demo)

Orchestra: BBC Philharmonic Orchestra
Conductor: Andrew Gourlay

Sirens - for Symphony Orchestra

Eraserhead (Unmastered)

Cameron

Luke Jones plays Chopin, Beethoven, Debussy and Ravel

TOM HARROLD is an award-winning Scottish composer whose music has received worldwide performances by a multitude of performing groups and artists.
Described as "brazen...bold...confident" [the Guardian] and "packed with incessant energy" [the Scotsman], Tom's recent output includes DARKENED DREAMS (a Proms commission which was broadcast live simultaneously on BBC Radios 3 & 4), NIGHTFIRES, a BBC commission that is "...among the most exciting pieces by a Scottish composer in the last 25 years..."[the Herald], and RAZE, which opened the Last Night of the BBC Proms.

SILENT SHORES, for string quartet | The Edinburgh Quartet | 2015

Tom Harrold

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