LSO Soundhub 2019-21

I am honoured and grateful to have been made a London Symphony Orchestra Associate Composer and to have been commissioned to write two unique works for the Soundhub Scheme, which premiered in March 2021 and July 2021 at LSO St Luke’s.

I mBéal na Toinne (2021)

Written for three cellos and three sine waves, it is a piece both whispered and in slow motion. The strings and electronics constantly mirror each other in a deconstructed musical narrative that mimics the rhythm of breathing while sleeping, and the undulating movement of the sea. Observing the unique shape of each harmonic utterance – its attack, sustain and release – has a meditative and conditioning quality, and was inspired by my first attempts to compose again following the birth of my son, Naoise, during the first lockdown of 2020. While composing I drew heavily on imagery of the motion and contour of quiet waves near a shore, thinking on how to represent how the air and the sea take each other's inverted shape as their volumes meet when the waves rise and fall. Composed for LSO Soundhub Phase 1 and performed by players of the London Symphony Orchestra at LSO St Luke’s in March 2021.

Clapsholas [na maidine] (2021)

Written for three violins, three cellos, six sine waves and live projections, 'Clapsholas [na maidine]' (Irish for half-light, gloaming, twilight) is the second piece of an evolving series exploring transcendence in the natural world. For several years I've been asking myself about the importance of narrative and trajectory in my music. I look for simple gestures and dualities in art, music and in the world - a hairpin, a breath, a crescendo, a sunrise - and I try to create pieces in which everything is known to us from the outset (the sun will rise) but whose certainty encourages us to experience things more in the moment. The live projections and lighting design draw on abstract depictions of the movement of celestial bodies in the sky and the blushing transfiguration of colours and hues which are unique to the half-light of the moon and the rising sun. Composed for LSO Soundhub Phase 2 and performed by players of the London Symphony Orchestra at LSO St Luke’s in July 2021.