Solo Works

For Solo Cello  (January 2025)

Duration - C. 7'

Let It Become is a work for Scordatura Solo Cello. The piece revolves around the harmony created by the retuned strings (Bb D F C), and the emergence of singular sounds out of repeated gestures. The piece continues an ongoing fascination with player choice, in this case in both notes played (or sung!) or the length of gesture. 

This piece was premiered by Catherine Cotter on the 27th of March as part of the RCM Composition Faculty Showcase

A recording can be found here

For Soprano and Piano, commissioned by Leeds Lieder for the 'Leeds Songbook' Showcase

Duration - 4'

Programme Note:

Only here travels between tranquil reflections of parenthood and florid expressions of movement and dance. Capturing what it means to watch someone flourish, to see everything that they could become and to let them go. It sets Solo Choreography, a poem by Elizabeth Chadwick, about which she says:

My son, Henry, trains with the Northern Ballet’s Junior Associate programme. They’re an incredible organisation, not only for their world class productions, but for the inspirational training and education they provide to children from across Yorkshire. Watching him grow with them, as a dancer and a person, is incredibly moving.

A recording can be found here

For Solo Tuba (March 2024)

Duration - 8'

‘Time’s Kip’’ continues an ongoing collaboration with tuba player Sunny Anderson. The whole work is based on the sequence: 6537. Throughout the piece this sequence is adapted in various rhythmic and intervallic forms, and more subtly in harmonic and structural ways. The work acts as a study for the tuba, exploring the underutilized agility and delicacy that can found in the instrument. 

The piece was premiered at the Royal College of Music on the 30th of April 2024. A recording can be found here.

For the HeadOn photo festival (October 2023)

Duration - 3'

Written for solo violin as part of the HeadOn photo festival project, 'Elysian Beaches' was inspired by the photo 'tropical metropolis' by an anonymous photographer. The photo emulates "Kodak’s Aerochrome camouflage-revealing film, green vegetation shifts into the red end of the spectrum.” which highlights the interplay between the angular city and the lush vegetation. I interpreted this by creating the piece with 3 sections, exploring two techniques. The first section focuses on the alternation between artificial harmonics and stopped notes. The second section is a busy pizzicato line, full of repetition and constant changes in meter. The third section combines these two techniques and explores their interplay and possible combinations. 

The work was written for and premiered by Maria Noskova at the Royal College of Music on the 15th of March 2024.

Whilst no recording exists please feel free to email for access to the score and the MIDI mock-up.

For Solo Cello (March - May 2023)

Duration - 27'30"

Forest is a modular cello suite that explores the relationship between the player and composer. Over the course of its 5 pieces the player traverses a Forest, and as they travel deeper and deeper into the forest they get less and less material from the composer. Each of the 5 pieces focus on different aspects of playing and invention in their own right:

Exploring is centred on exact discrepancies. Invention revolves around slight changes in time signature or tuplet length. The player has very little freedom. 

Descent is based heavily off Scottish trad music, using rhythms, harmonies, techniques and intervals from that tradition. Inspiration was also taken  from intonation features of trad music, having the player to detune one of their strings over the course of the piece, hence the name descent. 

Search explores the sounds in between the equal temperament notes on the cello, looking at glissandi and vibrato. The piece is influenced by Daphne Oram’s gestural writing. As this piece is the midpoint of the pieces, it begins to give the player many more options in how they play what is written. Rhythm is rarely notated, many of the end points of the glissandi are up to the player’s discretion and much of how they interpret the lines is up to them. 

The light is about cells. The player now has almost all the aspects of the music in their control, all bar the melodic material and timing (in a macro sense). They choose the order in which they play the melodic set of cells. Each of these cells is followed by a cadence from the ordered set of interval cells (From ‘most to least’ dissonant intervals). 

Lost has almost no input from the composer, at least in a musical sense. They have a text to improvise along, the text being a poem that follows the player’s journey throughout all the pieces. There are short cells to help guide the player and give them material, but they are minimal and, more importantly, optional. This text is also given to the audience. By the end of the poem, the player, both in the story and in the performance, are lost. 

Premiered in full by Alex Boyd-Bench on the 30th of June 2023 at St Mary Abbots Church.  A recording can be found here (Not of premiere).

For Solo Tuba (November 2022)

Duration - 4'15"

Written for tuba player Sunny Anderson, 'I Can't Do This Today' is about the player being continually disturbed from their sleep by alarms, to their ever-growing annoyance. The material of these figures is derived from various common alarms. Over the piece the calm, unmeasured sections become increasingly agitated as they are repeatedly interrupted by these alarm figures. This escalates until the player triumphantly ‘wakes up’, after which they are then woken up from the piece by a real alarm. 

Premiered at the Royal College of Music by Sunny Anderson on the 23rd of November 2022. A recording can be found here (Not of the premiere).

For the HeadOn photo festival (October 2022)

Duration - 4'10"

Written for solo piano as part of the HeadOn photo festival project. The piece was inspired by the photo 'Life Origins' by Camille Mazier, of a Polynesian volcano. A low register is used in the opening to create a bubbling, volcanic atmosphere. This effect is also realized by the quasi-tremolandos. The middle sections emulate the surprising quiet of nature, especially in these dangerous environments, and the reflecting the photographer does on his late father in the photo. The bubbling figure returns, rounding off the piece. 

The piece was initially premiered by Thomas Luke on the 29th of November 2022 in the Recital Hall in the RCM. The work was then  rewritten in April 2023.

A recording of the premiere can be found here.