This short, two-movement work came out of an earlier work for solo viola, Gaza Cantos, which was written after the invasion of the Gaza Strip by the Israeli Defence Forces in December 2008. The title references Amir Nizar Zuabi’s play I am Yusuf and this is my brother, set before and after ‘al Nakba’ in […]
By Chris
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Also posted in Works
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Tagged 2011, solo, violin
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Friedrich Engels lived in Manchester for more than 20 years, during that time receiving many visits from Karl Marx who was living in London. Engels led a double life as both manager of his father’s cotton factory and political radical, and the harsh conditions of workers in Mancunian industry formed a key influence on his ideas […]
By Chris
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Also posted in Works
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Tagged 2010, electro, percussion
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This is Water!, for ensemble and tape, takes its name from the book of the same title by David Foster Wallace, subtitled ‘Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life’ (Little, Brown & co., New York, 2009). Here is the passage, which gives that book its name: There are these two young […]
By Chris
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Also posted in Works
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Tagged 2010, audio, cello, clarinet, electro, electronics, flute, percussion, string quartet, viola, violin
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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 […]
By Chris
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Also posted in Works
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Tagged 2010, audio, electro, fixed media
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Tuesday, 30 December 2008
Partly an experiment in textural and notational possibilities, Intensifications, for 2 violas and cello, is in three short movements. Over the course of the work we move through a spectrum of pitched to unpitched sounds and back again, pushing the instruments’ sonic possibilities to the edges of audibility and conventional technique. Each movement is governed […]
By Chris
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Also posted in Works
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Tagged 2008, cello, viola
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