Author Archives: Chris

Scenes from Babel

Scenes from Babel uses re­cord­ings of the human voice al­most ex­clus­ively, ex­ploring the sound material’s po­ten­tial for the con­trasting of a nat­ural (but seem­ingly ar­ti­fi­cial), in­terior, oral space with an ar­ti­fi­cial (but seem­ingly nat­ural), ex­terior, en­vir­on­mental space. The re­cord­ings are of the story of the Tower of Babel (Genesis 11:1  –  9) in ten lan­guages and I […]

Posted in Withdrawn, Works | Tagged , , , | Comments Off on Scenes from Babel

Three Sky Studies

Chant-cris Notturno/Abschiedslied I Aubade/Abschiedslied II Three Sky Studies, for solo piano, were com­posed over the course of 2009, with ‘Chant-cris’, a vir­tu­osic scat­tering of notes in­spired by bird­song and Elliott Carter’s Caténaires, acting as a kind of short pre­lude to the second and third move­ments, which were written with pi­anist friends in mind. The first […]

Posted in Works | Tagged , , , | Comments Off on Three Sky Studies

Richard Casey Piano Workshop

Two new piano studies written as part of my Masters course will be work­shopped along­side those of other Masters stu­dents by Richard Casey, winner of the British Contemporary Piano Competition and founder-member of con­tem­porary music en­semble Psappha, on Monday 14 December. The studies ex­plore as­pects of time and har­mony, de­manding tra­di­tional vir­tu­osity of speed and […]

Posted in Workshops | Tagged , , | Comments Off on Richard Casey Piano Workshop

Notturno/Abschiedslied I @ New Music North West

Written in June Notturno/Abschiedslied I, for solo piano, was premiered by Olivia Jageurs on 26 November as part of the New Music North West Festival (23−27 November) in a Vaganza con­cert cel­eb­rating Peter Maxwell Davies’s new role as patron of Manchester University Music Society. Listings: Facebook / Official page / Full fest­ival schedule Poster (PDF, 124kb)

Posted in Performances | Tagged , , , , | Comments Off on Notturno/Abschiedslied I @ New Music North West

Books of Moses @ MANTIS Festival

Books of Moses, a stereo acous­matic work written last year at the NOVARS Research Centre, re­ceived its public premiere at the MANTIS Festival this au­tumn in a con­cert in­cluding works by Alexis Guneratne, Richard Scott, Mark Pilkington and Diana Simpson. The weekend fest­ival fea­tured cur­ated con­certs from guest com­posers Denis Smalley and Theodore Lotis alongside […]

Posted in Performances | Tagged , | Comments Off on Books of Moses @ MANTIS Festival
  • Microbiography

    Chris Swithinbank is a British-Dutch com­poser who works with both acoustic in­stru­ments and elec­tronic sounds. He is cur­rently a stu­dent at Harvard University with Chaya Czernowin.
    Full Biography »

  • Hear