Solo instrument and small ensemble

Infinite Wave (2024) - for guitar quartet (10’)

Commissioned by Creative Scotland for Quartet Malamatina in 2023. This piece has been performed by the group on a variety of occasions, and a full score video can be heard here:

Before Sunrise (2020) - Solo piano (5’)

Before Sunrise is a short work for piano solo composed for Matthew Schellhorn. I wanted to evoke the sounds of emerging dawn by creating textures that float in and out of focus and move between foreground and background. Sounds of birds echo around the piano, with varying lengths of sustain and decay creating a flexible and mysterious atmosphere. Scattered passages fly across all registers of the piano to mimic flocks of unsettled birds, while other moments focus in on a single melodic fragment. In the middle of the piece we hear an accompanying passage that leads the way for a slower melodic figure, before a number of fleeting climactic figures return to the triplet calls of the opening, reaching out into silence.

Echoes (2019) - for solo cello (5’)

This short prelude was commissioned by Rebecca Hepplewhite for the Borough New Music Festival, for performance in Summer 2019.

This short work for solo cello draws its inspiration from distant bells heard in the village of Menaggio on Lake Como, in Italy. This sound has been a constant point of return since my childhood, and always brings back happy memories for me. I wanted the individual sets of bell chimes, which are presented in the piece echoing into silence, to be enveloped by gentle murmurations and moments of lyrical expressivity. These bell sounds echo around the lake throughout the day, creating a tranquil and pensive atmosphere, and the different harmonic resonances conjure all manner of intriguing tonalities. I aimed to encapsulate at least some of this feeling in this brief work.

Returning (2014-20) - for cello and piano (15’)

Returning is a work for cello and piano that experiments with the idea of resonannce and consonance between two individual voices. The two voices intertwine within each other's resonance, and in this way form a constantly ebbing and flowing musical landscape. The main textual inspiration for this piece was Pablo Neruda's collection of poetry 'The Sea and the Bells'. I have returned to this source of inspiration multiple times recently, forcing me to reinterpret already familiar texts through musical means. I have tried to reflect this in my piece, as there are sections that require fresh re-interpretation whenever the piece is performed due to the nature of the notation. Returning is highly rhapsodic in style, and draws visual inspiration from the fabulous artwork of Chloe Leaper, an artist for whom line drawings are an endless source of creative potential. This piece embarks on a journey through one specific pencil drawing of hers, interpreting the lively line movements as paths through various musical mazes and caverns. Throughout the piece, there are moments where the players are required to respond to tempi set by the other instrumentalist, so I would encourage performers to adopt as free and organic an approach to interpreting the musical score.

Large Ensemble

The Calm Sea (2024) - for accordion orchestra (5’)

Composed for the 90th Anniversary of the Geneva Union of Accordionists.

Vermillion (2021) - for accordion orchestra (5’)

Composed during lockdown for London Accordion Orchestra, reflecting the visual work of Takayuki Yoshida. First performed in 2022 at LSO St Luke’s by the ensemble.

Unearthed (2018-19) - for chamber orchestra (13’)

This three movement work for chamber orchestra was commissioned by Consortium Novum of Oxford, directed by Matthew Reese. It was first performed in the Sheldonian Theatre in Oxford in June 2018 to raise funds for homelessness relief.

The Day Does Not Pass (2018) - for accordion orchestra (7’)

This piece was composed for the London Accordion Orchestra in 2018, under the direction of Ian Watson, who conducted the piece at Duke’s Hall at Royal Academy of Music in spring 2018, and subsequently in Philharmonic Hall in Slovenia's capital Ljubljana on the 6th May 2018. This piece is inspired by The sea and the bells by Pablo Neruda, and I have tried to reflect gradual accumulations of tone and harmony in waves over the course of the piece.

Further information about the orchestra can be found here.

Constellations (2017) - for open scoring ensemble (5’)

Composed for CoMA (Contemporary Music for All) in 2017 and subsequently performed in London on. This piece was inspired by the artwork of Joan Miró, specifically his work Woman encircled by the flight of a bird. An open-scoring work, this piece can be performed by any combination of instruments, as all four lines of the score can be interpreted in any clef and any key/transposition. This results in clouds of harmonic resonance that constantly change depending on the instrumentation, creating ‘constellations’ of material that unfolds over the course of the piece.

Orchestral

The River in the Sky (2020) - for large orchestra (15’)

This large-scale work for symphony orchestra was inspired by the final book by Australian poet and critic Clive James. His work is a profound exploration of the passing of time, and represents the reflections of someone conscious of the approaching end of life. In my piece I have tried to reflect a very slow progression of time through sustained and glittering material, which gradually transforms over time. James’ book took me back to a very vivid memory I have of being on a boat with my parents on the Mediterranean sea around Stromboli, and seeing the sun setting behind this active volcano which protrudes out of the sea. As the sun set I could see the molten lava atop the silhouette of this island volcano, and due to the lack of artificial light, the whole of the milky way became visible in an enormous stretch across the sky. I was struck by the sheer vastness of everything around me, and this piece therefore tries to recreate this feeling in sound, to whatever extent that is possible.

Relics (2018) - for large orchestra (15’)

Composed in the summer of 2018, this work, for me, represents the antithesis of my more recent orchestral work The River in the Sky. Rather than glittering and shimmering textures, this work focusses on volcanic explosions of sound, with sonorities requiring extreme exertion from the players. A single movement work, this piece also explores some of the approaches to time that I have developed further in more recent work. For example, the juxtaposition of free-time material with precisely notated ideas creates a temporal tension that propels this work forward.

At Ghosting Hour (2017) - for large orchestra (8’)

My first completed work on the large-scale canvas of symphony orchestra, this piece is inspired by the feeling of dread and terror during the night, when sounds are transformed by the mind to create feelings of uncertainty. This piece reflects on the anxiety this causes, as our minds go into overdrive trying to pair fairly innocuous sounds such as doors closing, animal sounds, or wooden beams adjusting in cold temperatures into sounds of potential intruders. This piece was workshopped by the Royal Academy of Music Symphony Orchestra in 2018.

At Ghosting Hour is based on a poem by James Joyce from his collection of poems called 'Chamber Music'. The poem reads:

Thou leanest to the shell of night,
Dear lady, a divining ear.
In that soft choiring of delight
What sound hath made my heart to fear?
Seemed it of rivers rushing forth
From the grey deserts of the north?

That mood of thine, O timorous,
Is his, if thou but can scan it well,
Who a mad tale bequeaths to us
At ghosting hour conjurable –
And all for some strange name he read
In Purchas or in Holinshed.