November 2022 saw the premiere of my new work, DyingHaunts for Horn Quartet and live, improvised electronics, commissioned and performed by the Rookh Quartet. You can watch the first performance, here.

Programme Note:

DyingHaunts – for Horn Quartet and Improvised Live Electronics

This piece represents my first work with live acoustic instruments in over 15 years and has been an exercise in pure indulgence for me, one in which I’ve had fun just making the sounds I wanted and using those sounds to try to evoke a particular feeling. The sound of the French Horn has always been evocative of a particular time in my life – Sunday evenings as a child, in which I would sit in front of our slightly cranky living room gas fire and watch on our also slightly cranky tv both Jim Henson’s Storyteller and the BBC adaptation of The Chronicles of Narnia. It’s always Christmas when I recall this memory, though I suspect it rarely was (I’m not even sure those shows were on on a Sunday!). For me, though, this memory recalls a sense of contentment, warmth and uncomplicated joy that seems to be a little more difficult to come by as an adult and that, along with the slight murkiness and ambiguity I associate with nostalgia and remembering, is what I’m seeking to explore in this piece.