ABOUT
I’m a composer and performer, originally from Yorkshire (UK), currently living and working in Copenhagen (DK). I often work at an intersection between music for instruments and voices; electronic sound; text; video; and performance. My work regularly engages with a re-contextualisation of everyday sounds, objects, and automatic, repetitive behaviours to reveal the latently musical in the banal.
My latest pieces have involved documentary techniques; audience participation; repetition; choreography; modified & prepared acoustic instruments acting as disfiguring filters for 19th century music; custom-built, tactile electronic instruments such as paintbrush synthesizers and mini-vibration motors; soundwaves visualised in fire; quotation; a virtual singer and choir singing YouTube comments; gamification; performance of awkward and mundane verbal interactions; unedited field recordings; and spatialised music for street orchestra performed on top of mountains, in train stations, in swimming pools, and in remote communities.
Recent commissions have come from Aarhus Kammerorkester; SPOR Festival (for Duo Van Vliet); Aarhus Kammerorkester; Riot Ensemble / Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival (for percussionist Sam Wilson); The Night With… (for The Hermes Experiment); Hebrides Ensemble / Edinburgh Book Festival; The Cumnock Tryst (for the Scottish Chamber Orchestra); Cryptic Glasgow; Sasha Savaloni (guitarist) / Current Resonance; Nevis Ensemble (street orchestra); and Live Music Now (for the Dohnányi String Trio).
In 2023, Silberblau for guitar and electronics was nominated / shortlisted for both an Ivor Novello Award and a Scottish Award for New Music. In 2018, 10 Seconds, written for 9 players and 4-channel audio was awarded the Dorico Award at The Scottish Awards for New Music. During the same year I was Composer-in-Residence with Scotland's Street Orchestra, Nevis Ensemble and was one of 12 composers involved with Yaron Deutsch’s Electric Guitar Etude Project at the Darmstädter Ferienkurse.
My music has been programmed at festivals such as: SPOR Festival (DK); Darmstädter Ferienkurse (DE); Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival (UK); Matera Intermedia (IT); St Magnus International Festival (UK); MINU_festival_for_expanded_music (DK); Ung Nordisk Musik 2022 (IS); The Cumnock Tryst (UK); Visiones Sonoras (MX); Sound-Image (UK) and at venues such as Newcastle's Sage Gateshead; Edinburgh's Usher Hall; London's Southbank Centre and St John's, Smith Square; Aarhus’ Musikhuset; and Mexico City's Ex Teresa Arte Actual.
I've had the opportunity to work on my music with, or have scheduled engagements with, artists and ensembles such as: SWR Symphony Orchestra; BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra; ensemble mosaik; Curious Chamber Players; percussionist Sam Wilson (Riot Ensemble); Athelas Sinfonietta; Aarhus Sinfonietta; Hebrides Ensemble; Red Note Ensemble; The Hermes Experiment; K!ART; accordionist Andreas Borregaard; violinist Anna Jalving; and guitarists Frederik Munk Larsen and Sasha Savaloni.
My debut electroacoustic EP Palettes was released on New York based label Not Art Records, and Daily Rituals for amplified quartet and playback, performed by The Hermes Experiment was released on TNW Music’s ‘Live Vol. 1’. 2024 sees the release of COLD CALLS, a short collection of works released on Don't Look Back Records (DK).
My music has been written about and reviewed in various publications including Positionen (DE), Seismograf (DK), The Guardian, TEMPO New Music Journal, I CARE IF YOU LISTEN and Bachtrack.
I graduated from the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland in 2018, where I studied composition with David Fennessy and Dr. Linda Buckley, electroacoustic composition with Dr. Alistair MacDonald, and jazz guitar with Kevin Mackenzie. Having completed a Master's degree at the Royal Academy of Music, Aarhus (Det Jyske Musikkonservatorium) in 2021, where I studied with Niels Rønsholdt, Juliana Hodkinson, Simon Steen-Andersen and Marcela Lucatelli, I went on to complete a Soloist Programme (Advanced Post-graduate Diploma). My 'debut concert' was held in February 2024.
I am member of composer-performer group Current Resonance, regularly contributing to meticulously curated intermedial events. As a performer, I have played music by artists such as Jessie Marino, Louis d'Heudieres, James Saunders, Joss Smith, Lil Lacy, Simon Løffler, Caitlin Rowley, Nina Fukuoka, John Zorn, Heather Frasche, Michael Hope, Mikołaj Laskowski and Monika Szpyrka, as well as regularly performing in my own work. Recent engagements for Current Resonance come from SPOR Festival (DK), Radikal Jung (DE), and Minu_festival_for_expanded_music (DK).
I am the chairperson for Aarhus Unge Tonekunstnere and the treasurer of Ung Nordisk Musik Danmark. As of 2024, I teach composition at Sankt Annæ Gymnasium (MGK) in Copenhagen.
Photography by @jadefrancesphoto