Work
On Hearing the Shining Cuckoo
for orchestra
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About
On Hearing the Shining Cuckoo borrows musical ideas (and its title) from the famous work by Frederick Delius. It is in six movements and includes the birdsong of the shining cuckoo and grey warbler. The cuckoo migrates to New Zealand every spring and lays its eggs in the nest of the warbler.
On Hearing the Shining Cuckoo is filled with hope and wariness and is a response to current events, both environmental and cultural. A chasm lies between our often sentimental attachment to the natural environment and the reality of how our lives affect it. This is paralleled in the discrepency between the talk and action in the value our society places on the arts.
Commissioned note
Commissioned by the Saint Matthew's Chamber Orchestra