'you look like your mother' scored for four voices

friends scoring music for proper musicians and vocalists has always made me a little envious and being unfulfilled with the idea of producing piano scores no one else could read i have long harboured a desire to produce a score for voice or voices.

talking to the composer alex temple about contemporary classical music and trans*/ gender queer and gender variant people within it's fold i decided to put into action my so far only half realised plans for just such a score.

over the last few months i've drawn various diagrams describing how individuals where to move and vocalise which where to be printed on transparencies and laid over texts (i have long planned to set the beautiful but unsettling lyrics of the psalms this way, perhaps i will some day) but have felt each one was to restrictive in how it instructed the individual performer and though i offer some restrictions in my piano pieces i leave it mostly open to the individual player to determine the sound of the piece.

as often with more ambitious work i fretted over this for a long time only to find a solution quite quickly (or rather in a moment of clarity.)

the nine pages of this score incorporate the text of 'you look like your mother (minus the introduction and afterword) and, as with the book, can be arranged in any order. the lines drawn on the page give the parts for each voice and each voice has two parts per page with a third part given to one of the four voices per page.

no durations or instructions are given.

thank you for your time.

anti-semitism, memory and music

there is no way that we can deny that anti semitism is on the rise across europe and it is a poison, a poison which we should not allow in a civilised society

i have addressed the history of the shoah and the kristallnacht several times and have also focused on anti semitism and it's place in european culture but sadly this is a have so deeply ingrained in our culture that it will come up time and time again.

i was speaking recently to artist, musician and film maker chris dooks regarding the rise of anti semitism in europe and he told me that his greatest worry is that this will make it harder to find graves of german family members who suffered during the shoah. the horror and sadness of this became the germ for a set of piano works based around a setting for the star of david (using a technique of scoring for piano i have discussed here before) but the work was not began as it is such a bleak subject (i had intended two ten minute piano pieces based upon the discussion with chris.)

recently the awesomely (and i mean that in it's true sense - the depth and breath of her work fills me with awe) writer, artist, musician and composer ela orleans spoke of growing up in poland around the site of auschwitz.

combining the two narratives allowed me to finally complete the work as ela orleans' narrative offered a sense of hope and rebirth

i know that this will not be the last time i approach this subject or feel the need to speak out on this issue. anti semitism is a cancer in our society.

ten annihilations (for tina

this lengthy poem is based upon a line from wilfred owen's 'futility' and is dedicated to the artist tina hibbins

john dowland, sorrow and the timelessness of music

i've been working with the artist jude cowen montague on a second ep of works based upon prepared texts derived from well known songs, in this instance songs by john dowland (the first was on folk songs)

immersing myself in the work of such a central figure in english language song has left me even more impressed by his achievements, even more in awe of the beauty contained within his arrangements. few works achieve such an elevated level, a point at which they produce a rush of joy and spiritual and emotional release. bach's setting of john's passion achieves this, cage's silence, byrd's consort songs also have moments which lift the listener out of their own body. all these works (and others) have a timelessness which i have tried to capture in my settings for jude cowen montague's voice.

while working on this ep (hopefully it will be completed soon) i worked on four one hour long organ pieces (all split into two thirty minute sections) for each of the songs we are working with.

i hope these hint towards the timelessness of dowland's work.