Category: Composing

  • Pro Corda Recomposed

    It was a real pleasure to teach composition on the Senior Course at Pro Corda in August; all the students had a genuine love for chamber music and enjoyed every minute of their time in the beautiful surroundings of Leiston Abbey, Suffolk. I wanted to devise a composition project that would allow the students to…

  • New Voices @ CUA

    My choral piece ‘Versa est in luctum’ was performed in January as part of the New Voices festival at Catholic University of the Arts in Washington, DC. As part of the festival website I was asked to write about the piece and my musical inspiration; below is what I submitted. Originally published on the festival…

  • Corpo: Lixa da Alma (Waste: Body of Soul)

    Anomalous Visuals writes of the work that I composed music for: “Performed at Cena Brasil Internacional Festival, Waste-Body of the Soul was an international multimedia installation involving artists based in London, Berlin and Rio. Conceived by costume designer Mauricio Carneiro and artist Beo da Silva, the collaborative project combines performance, poetry, live feed video, music…

  • Repeating Music

    Enjoyable and educational concert by the London Sinfonietta last night; an introduction to minimalism, combined with video design and curated with quotes and extracts of interviews from the three composers programmed. Phillip Glass, Steve Reich and Terry Riley made a well paced programme which included some visually interesting pieces (Pendulum Music by Reich) and the…

  • ‘Re-enchanting the quotidian’

    ‘Re-enchanting the quotidian’, writes Stuart Jeffries in his Guardian review of Michael Foley’s 2012 book ‘Embracing the Ordinary’. I quite like that. An interesting read particularly for the comparison of Proust and Joyce, this book attempts to instil a sense of wonder in the minutiae of existence that perhaps we often overlook. I latched onto…

  • Keep asking questions

    Below are some questions are invite my pupils to ask of their composition coursework for GCSE and A Level music. There can never be one way to approach this but only suggestions of where a piece of coursework could go. Stylistic consistency is the key to a successful composition for GCSE and A Level and…

  • Quote in ‘Musicians Handbook’ (Rhinegold, 2013)

    Not that I’m saying much here…

  • Keynote Student Conference

    It was an enjoyable day yesterday joining of a team of experienced musicians and teachers to talk about the performing, composing and analysing/listening components of the A Level Music courses. The audience of over 250 students and teachers were appreciative and got involved with enthusiasm and humour with the various activities. What made the day…

  • A right way to teach composing?

    With composition a compulsory part of the school music curriculum (at all levels) I continually reflect on my approach to teaching composing. The range of activities vary from whole class, small groups to individuals and emcompass a breadth of styles and genres. There can never be one method but a series of strategies that can…

  • Unbroken Line

    I love collaboration. I thrive on it I think, and it is always exciting to have that first meeting to discuss a new project. My next incidental music project is for a solo show by Jamie Zubairi, Unbroken Line, that will be premiered in Ovalhouse this December. What particularly grabs me by the project is…