I have now finished my biggest lockdown piece, a suite for solo harp, Street Through A Window. Bryn Lewis recently gave a wonderful performance of its first movement for the London Symphony Orchestra’s #CoffeeSessions.

​The London Symphony Orchestra has kindly published a post by me as part of a beautiful overview of the Panufnik Scheme. My description of my new piece, Muted The Night, sits alongside insights into the scheme from Jonathan Woolgar and Matthew Kaner.
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The Panufnik scheme has been wonderful, providing me with opportunities to work with astonishing musicians. Sadly, the current epidemic has delayed the workshop. Perhaps it is cruelly appropriate that a piece whose creation was so defined by unwilling confinement should have its realisation postponed in the same way. It was a hard necessity, having expended much to write the piece in recuperation.
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I will expand on my post for the LSO here, to mention another important point of reference.

Last weekend I had an experience that reminded me why I don’t teach grade exams in music.

I had a new student. He is musical and curious, with interests in film music, hip hop and (to my delight) Bartok. He had just failed his Grade 6 piano. He had been playing for years, but when asked what pieces he had enjoyed, he could not name one. He had quite liked a Bartok piece he’d started for a grade exam, but it was too hard, so he’d learnt an easier piece. In his words: “I’ve had to pick from the grade book each time, so I’ve never really liked anything.”

So I got to perform the role every teacher who’s ever watched a Hollywood film wants to play: throwing the textbook in the bin, and starting as if from scratch with music he liked. It was great fun, hopefully for both of us.

It has been a disastrous half-year for applications. I have applied to fifteen composition opportunities so far this year and received thirteen rejections (my final two rejections are pending by the 20th July).

Numbers soothe my soul, so  I have been carefully quantifying my rejection. I thought it might be encouraging. I know that I have low odds of scoring any given opportunity but maybe, in aggregate, my odds aren’t that bad. ​

Sound Unbound this weekend was excellent, I had a wonderful time as both an audience member and as a performer.
SANSARA’s performance of my piece was a wonderful experience. It’s a tricky work, but it had really clicked by the final rehearsal. I was overwhelmed with the response from the audience, who were incredibly generous in sharing many of their own stories of death with us after the show. I look forward to working through them and thinking about how they’ll affect the project.

Please do sign up to my mailing list there on the right if you want to stay up to date with the Vox Machina project, and to hear the recording when we put it out!  You should also sign up to SANSARA's to see all their future concerts.