This was the first digital ‘tape’ piece I made, in 1990 – by means of Cmix software on a friendly but decaying Vax computer at Princeton University. Structurally, I was trying to translate Fibonnaci principles, an enthusiasm that I’d used in a previous piano piece about a British waterfall, High Force, to an electronic medium.
Radiophonic miniature, 1995. This one-minute piece is a brief, evocative picture of children and their thoughts on what they want ‘in the future’ when they grow up.
Composed between 1997-2001, each of these short computer-processed soundscapes, midway between music and documentary (and sometimes with tunes), celebrates the ‘wonder’ of a particular time and place, and lasts exactly five minutes.
The inability to sleep, despite attempts at rest. Like an insomniac this piece is agitated and unable to settle. The instrumentalists inhabit a dark, oppressive world which is constantly active, fragmentary and bordering on nightmare.
Losing it….losing it…close your eyes. Close your eyes! …
Sleep… sleep – you’re losing it, losing it.
Trying to smudge that white line of consciousness.
Aching to fall… into oblivion.
Trapped in limbo between sleep and the desire to sleep.
Frozen beyond waking.
The piece was originally written for pianist (and physicist) Steven Neugarten, who said ‘why not write a piece about turbulence?’ and got my particular interpretation of the idea, a virtuoso piece that proceeds from bottom to top of the piano.
A digitally created soundscape, made from recordings collected late on a stormy night in the Derbyshire village of Hathersage. Walking alone, heart in mouth, the air seems full of spirits and outer reality becomes confused with inner imagination.
What would you do if you won a million? We’ve all played that game. Hard Cash (and small dreams of change) is an ironic elegy for the sound of hard cash, and a scherzo for our small dreams of change.
Winner of the 2012 New Media Writing Prize, this is an online and/or app-based interactive sound essay about listening and everyday experience. Turn up the sound and listen.
A short essay from 2008, on my interest in words and texts, and making art that incorporates them. Originally published in Playing with Words: the spoken word in artistic practice, ed Cathy Lane, CRiSAP/RGAP/Cornerhouse 2008.
Field recordings, 2008-9. For a couple of years we lived in Burwell, a large village in Cambridgeshire, England. It was then I started to think about local materials more generally and how much they infiltrate and continue to build a presence in the places we come to know as home.
Composed in 2011, the sixth piece in a series for piano, Fuga Interna, and the first to include a digital part, which also includes a text by myself about listening, learning to play the piano, age and memory.
Composed in 2000 for performance by Philip Mead, one of a series of relatively short works for piano, Fuga Interna, started in 1997.
The texts in these two very short movements, composed in 2000, are from some of the many notes and remarks that Leonardo da Vinci wrote in the margins and spaces of his Notebooks.
Solo piano, 2003. No recording just yet for this one yet, sorry. This is one of a continuing series of relatively short works for piano, started in 1997 (and very much still in progress). Each contains brief ‘quotes’ from those that preceded it, but the pieces can be performed in any order and combination, as the […]
Solo piano, 2000. One of a continuing series, each piece inspired by the pianist for whom I wrote the particular piece, and also from my experience of playing Bach’s Fugue in B minor, Book 1 of the Well-Tempered Clavier.
Solo piano, 1997. This is the first of a continuing series of relatively short works for piano, started in 1997 (and very much still in progress). Each contains brief ‘quotes’ from those that preceded it, but the pieces can be performed in any order and combination, as the performer prefers. All are inspired by the pianist for whom I wrote the particular piece, and also from my experience of playing Bach’s Fugue in B minor, Book 1 of the Well-Tempered Clavier.
Composed in 1994, Trilling Wire is virtuoso piece for clarinet with a fixed sound part. It is fast and furious, but does not require extended techniques. The title is taken from a line in T.S. Eliot’s poem, Four Quartets.
Composed in 2007. I lived on a small island off the West Coast of British Columbia, Canada. An experience of serious illness while there was the starting point for these ‘sonic fictions’, four short audio-texts about experience and place.