Performed by Trinity Laban New Music Orchestra, London

May 2019

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This work was inspired by the sometimes fractious relationship between composer, conductor, and orchestra. And canonic, pedagogic orchestration technique.

 

Beginning life as a piece intended to be littered with various orchestration mistakes and faux pas, it came to focus on just one: the page turn, both as an action in itself and its position in players’ parts. The work’s opening section involves the orchestra turning pages of the score, recalling an industrial soundscape or factory floor, while the main section contains increasingly awkward page turns inserted into certain players’ parts, but not the full score. Such strategies result in a heightening of the disunity and tension between conductor and orchestra. Musically, the work recoils from orchestral clarity and formal teleology, opting instead for a murky, muddy soup.