silk / gravel

About

This work is an exploration of the possibilities of the string orchestra as a body of sound, the orchestra at times acting like one giant super-instrument composed of intricately superimposed layers. Old textures are continually swallowed up, recycled and transformed, playing out a finely balanced tension between static and active, supple and brittle, strong and fragile. From a fluid, tangled haze, individual voices periodically emerge to assert some kind of nostalgic lyricism, but each time they are ultimately subsumed, swallowed up in an eerie, ambivalent mass of sound. Stylistically the music is varied and eclectic, weaving together the intricate, spidery lines of Ligeti, the delicate chordal sonorities of Messiaen, the caustic anger of Shostakovich and even the brooding menace of Anthony Watson.