Some words that I had nearby while writing this piece (courtesy of Roger Deakin, C.D. Wright, Seamus Heaney and Friedrich Dürrenmatt): Daydreaming has been my making and my undoing — like having a light at your back you can’t see but can still feel. ‘Since when,’ he asked, ‘Are the first and last line of any […]
By Chris
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Posted in Works
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Also tagged 2010, cello, chamber, flute, voice
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The nature of human perception is fascinatingly unclear. That so much of what we experience we experience almost unknowingly, taking in the textures of the world without clearly perceiving their construction from thousands of tiny strands is essential to the apparent ineffability of our surroundings. The heightened ambiguities of sleep and its perimeters introduce interesting […]
By Chris
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Posted in Works
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Also tagged 2009, electro, fixed media, tape
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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 […]
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 […]
By Chris
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Posted in Works
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Also tagged 2009, piano, solo
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Excavations was written in response to the Manchester Camerata Young Composers’ Project, calling for works inspired by Henry Purcell’s Fantazias to mark the 350-year anniversary of his birth. I arrived at the music after close study of these works, in particular the 4-part Fantazia in A minor (Z. 740). Some of the 17th-Century harmonic and […]
By Chris
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Posted in Works
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Also tagged 2008, ensemble, strings
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