After Severn Cullis-Suzuki

for violin and viola

2022  | 6’

Commissioned by Davos Festival

In 1992, Severn Cullis-Suzuki gave a speech to the Rio de Janeiro Earth Summit, a United Nations conference. Like me, she was born in 1979, and was only 12 years old at the time. 

The speech is a stunning and searing appeal to save the world from environmental catastrophes. 

I wanted to use part of the recorded speech as the starting point for my work. In the middle, Cullis-Suzuki says: “You don’t know how to fix the holes in our ozone layer…You don’t know how to bring back an animal now extinct. And you can’t bring back the forests that once grew where there is now a desert. If you don’t know how to fix it, please, stop breaking it.” It’s this last sentence that stuck with me. I look at it through my own filter, – this is not a transcription – fixing the flux of the speech-melody, freezing it, and tracing a slowed-down version of the rhythm. Repeating it. There is little change. 

In the 30 years since the speech, climate change has only worsened. We are living in an age of decline. 

Premiered in Davos, Switzerland by Eoin Ducrot and Alessandro D’Amico

Music for Europe

for flute (= alto flute), clarinet, percussion, piano and harp

2016  | 20’

Commissioned by Ensemble Adapter with funding from the Ernst von Siemens Musikstiftung 

SCORE

Hoch und strahlend steht der Mond. 

Ich habe meine Lampe ausgeblasen, und tausend Gedanken erheben sich von meines Herzensgrund. 

Meine Augen strömen über von Tränen.

Paul Klee (1916)

High and radiant is the moon. 

I blew out my lamp, and thousands of thoughts rise up from the bottom of my heart. 

My eyes overflow with tears 

Paul Klee created a text-painting using these words a hundred years ago, the year he was conscripted into, though never fought for, the German army. I saw this painting just days after the UK voted to leave the European Union. I was touched by it’s simple, fragile vulnerability made at a deeply fractured time.

Performances:

- Ensemble Adapter: hcmf//, Huddersfield UK, 2016 (premiere) and Ultraschall Festival Berlin, 2019

- Psappha, Manchester, 2019

String Quartet no. 2

2012  | 13’

Commissioned by the Wittener Tage für neue Kammermusik and hcmf//

everything does change

for clarinet, violin and cello

2012  | 5’

Note: this version is without film

Everything changes it is extraordinary how everything does change.

Getrude Stein, Everybody’s Autobiography

everything does change is a re-working and extension of a piece I wrote for a film – Klatov - by the Czech artist Pavla Scerankova. After the death of her grandfather, Pavla unearthed reams of Standard-8 footage that he had taken of his family, friends and surroundings. With the digitised versions, she created an homage to the joyful beauty of a place and people she knew, but never experienced first hand. The music is my response to the everyday happiness that the film captures and to these forgotten memories. 

Performances:        

- Trio Magritte, Milan, 2012 (premiere)

- London Sinfonietta, London, 2019

- lovemusic, Strasbourg, 2020

Everything changes

for viola and cello

2011  | 5’

Note: this version is with film

Everything changes was written for the short film - Klatov - by Czech artist Pavla Scerankova 

Performances : 

- Ensemble Amorpha at the British Film Institute, London, December 2011 (premiere)

- lovemusic, Frankfurt, March 2020

String Quartet

2010  | 8’

Performances:         

- Quatuor Diotima, Centre Acanthes, Metz, France, 2010 (Workshop)

- Radar Ensemble, Rheinsberg, Germany 2012 (Premiere)

- Skark Quartett, Berlin, Germany 2014

- Manon Quartet, London, 2017

RE-sonare

for accordion, cimbalom and two percussion

2006  | 10’