Commissioned by City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra to celebrate their centenary. World première given by the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra conducted by Clark Rundell at Symphony Hall, Birmingham, 29th January 2023.
The Biggest Thing I’ve Ever Squashed
The Biggest Thing I’ve Ever Squashed takes its name from an interview with the artist Cornelia Parker. She’s talking about a sousaphone which she flattened with an industrial press in order to make her piece Perpetual Canon. Perpetual Canon is a mobile made from suspended flattened brass instruments which have been arranged in the round and backlit onto the walls of the space in silhouette.
The Biggest Thing I’ve Ever Squashed begins with six bars of a march, which are repeated and gradually ‘squashed’ in various ways, before being exploded into fragments and arranged into a sort of structural mobile. Music is heard both in its original and shadow forms. At the end, remaining fragments are re-arranged into a new march, which carries the piece to its conclusion. Like Cornelia Parker’s sousaphone, the six bars of orchestral march that open the piece are the biggest thing I’ve ever squashed.
for Orchestra
2022
Kindertotenspiel
for Large Ensemble
2018
Commissioned by the London Philharmonic Orchestra for the LPO Leverhulme Young Composers Scheme 2017-18. World premiere given by the London Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Sir James MacMillan at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, Southbank Centre, 9th July 2018.
Commissioned by Nonclassical with funds from the PRSF Open Fund. World premiere given by the Nonclassical Orchestra cond. Jessica Cottis at Nonclassical: Rise of the Machines #2, Village Underground, 18th March 2018.
Interdimensional Cable
for Drum Machine and Orchestra
2017
Black Snow Falls
for 23 Solo Strings
2017
Commissioned by Outcry Ensemble with funds from the RVW Trust. World premières given by The Outcry Ensemble cond. James Henshaw at St John’s Notting Hill, 27th April 2017, and Temple Church, 9th May 2017.
Black Snow Falls takes its name from one of the final lines of Sarah Kane's play 4.48 Psychosis, which was completed in 1999 and premiered posthumously in 2000. 4.48 Psychosis is a first person account of the clinical depression that Kane was suffering from while writing it. Kane committed suicide shortly after finishing the play, and subsequently, the play has been interpreted as a long-form suicide note - especially because there are no allocated characters, and no discernible plot.
The three words "black snow falls", to my mind, are an extraordinarily vivid metaphor for suicidal depression. The surreal image of "black snow", brings into focus, for me, ideas of destruction and/or decay particularly because of the image's likeness to ash or soot. But the line's reference to meteorology also suggests a terrifying powerlessness from the perspective of the author - the weather is, like illnesses of the mind and body, something that we are unable to control.
If there is one idea binding my piece together, it is the idea of powerlessness. At the opening of the piece, you will hear fragments of stunted material - written to sound like yelps or cries - which attempt to coalesce into a whole before falling apart again. These fragments of material determine virtually all of the music of the piece - they are warped, distorted, placed in sequence, but never manage to develop in a meaningful way. At the end of the piece, they are overwhelmed and finally suffocated by a sequence of chords on lower strings.