Selene

Akira Kosemura & Lawrence English - Twilight Wave

Akira Kosemura & Lawrence English - Tint Of Ionosphere

Akira Kosemura & Lawrence English - Crescents

Akira Kosemura & Lawrence English - The Shadow Falling

Akira Kosemura & Lawrence English - Crater

Performed by the Micklegate Singers, conducted by Nicholas Carter, at St Lawrence's Church in York, 23rd March 2024.

In this beautiful Quaker funerary text by Quaker by William, I saw a glimmer of a philosophical idea that has captivated me since my school days. Derek Parfait’s Reasons and Persons breaks down conventional ideas of selfhood, prompting us to view it as a chain of experiences rather than a thing of itself. This suggests a rethinking of death that emphasises the continuity of our experience in others: friends ‘live in one another still’.

This piece’s musical language is inspired by Georgian polyphony, which is oriented around stacked fifths and fourths. These move in unfamiliar ways, contracting and expanding in parallel movements that feel counterintuitive to me yet profoundly satisfying and resonant. The power of these parallel fifths and the weight with which they converge in moments of unison felt appropriate for this work: I hoped to write a register both serious and yet surprising, open to movement and joy.

Beyond The World

Absence

WP: Morisot Trio, 24th June 2015, St Bride's, Fleet Street, City of London Festival
 
This piece was awarded the 2015 Lord Mayor's Composition Prize and was given its premiere as part of the City of London Festival by the Morisot Trio at St Bride's Church, Fleet Street on June 24th of that year.
This piece explores different ways of expressing single musical strands. The first movement is a piece of pure two-part counterpoint for violin and cello in which the two lines begin apart and gradually 'bind' together. In the second, the piano outlines the descent of a single line while the violin and cello create and 'weave' falling and rising lines respectively. In the third, fugal movement, a line of music is gradually 'spun' out over longer and longer periods. These first three movements all undergo a process of either centrifugal or centripedal motion, collapsing in on themselves or, in the case of the third movement, opening out. The final fourth movement is more like an extended single moment, in which the ensemble trace a single line from the bottom to top of the keyboard surrounded by fleeting memories of previous movements, as if seeing the whole piece from above.

Bind, Weave, Spin

I'm a composer and conductor currently studying at Cambridge University. 

I've written pieces for a range of student and professional musicians, with recent performances by the Choir of Clare College, Cambridge, musicians from the Britten Sinfonia and violinist Peter Sheppard Skaevard. Amongst other projects, I'm currently working on a song-cycle for countentenor and piano on poems by Michelangelo, and a commission for the Britten Sinfonia for their 2013-14 At Lunch series.

As well as composing, I'm also a conductor, currently holding the positions of Conducting Scholar for the Cambridge University Music Society and conductor of the Cambridge University Symphony Orchestra. I'm lucky enough to travel the world as a Choral Scholar in the Choir of Clare College, Cambridge and also sing in close-harmony group Over the Bridge. 

I'm a pianist, cellist and for the last two years have enjoyed working with English Touring Opera on their outreach project Turtle Song.

Musings about various musical things can be found here: http://www.interlude.hk/

Follow here for new pieces and projects - or email me at williamajcole@gmail.com


Bind, Weave, Spin

williamajcole

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