It Could Be You or You or You
2020 | 10'
Commissioned by the Royal Academy of Music
for solo harp with optional amplification
It Could Be You or You or You is one of a collection of 200 solo pieces commissioned to celebrate the bicentenary of the Royal Academy of Music in 2022.
The Lesson of the Ice-House
2012 | 4'
Commissioned by Manchester Camerata
for violoncello and drone
Homes, and How to Make Them is an 1875 instructional epistolary novel by Eugene Clarence Gardner designed to give "hints on locating and building a house… in letters between an architect and a family man seeking a home". The book succinctly captures the middle-class lifestyle of late nineteenth-century Massachusetts and suggests not only how one should construct their house, but also how they should conduct their life within the home. For me, though, the most evocative part of the book is the titles of the letters. Listed in the table of contents, they read like a found poem telling a surprisingly sad story of optimism, aspiration and loss. The titles of the last twelve of the letters are:
Go to; let us build a tower
Basements and balconies
Four rooms enough
Conveniences and conjectures
The lesson of the ice-house
Shingles, sunshine, and fresh air
Where the doctors differ
How to do it
The breath of life
Eternal vigilance
Saved by conscience
Final and personal
To Carve in Wild Cherry was commissioned by Oliver Coates. It was first performed by him January 29, 2012 at Southbank Centre as part of Harmonic Series.
To Carve in Wild Cherry imagines a lost, folk-cello performance tradition where melodies are exclusively played on one string with the adjacent strings used for resonance and harmony. The piece was inspired by the music of Appalachian composer, singer and dulcimer player John Jacob Niles. The title is drawn from a poem of the same name by Jonathan Williams:
To Carve in Wild Cherry
For John Jacob Niles
30 dulcimers-
one long life
and what I said to the one of wild cherry was
bend a little, break later
where the bamma-gilly and the cow-cumber
flower forever
in a god's eye
out under the sky
out under the sky
- Jonathan Williams
Pike and Shot refers to a military formation used from the Italian wars of the late fifteenth century until the adoption of the bayonet in the seventeenth century. A mixed formation of 'pike' and 'shot' allows the musketeers to inflict casualties from a distance while the pikemen protected them from enemy cavalry.
Pike and Shot was written for Lionel Handy and Nigel Clayton in 2008.