COMPOSITION

I love writing music based on the musicality of everyday speech and the particularity of everyday words, voices and stories. Much of my work finds its starting point in conversation, from organised interviews to personal interactions, from group reflections in workshops to chats with friends.

Scroll down for some pieces I’ve written (both solo and collaboratively):

Isolation, In Your Words

Isolation, In Your Words is a musical documentary about life in lockdown, co-written with collaborators Mandeep., Kevin Fox and Zar, for BBC Culture in Quarantine. The project uses lyrical storytelling and verbatim techniques to blur the line between songwriting and social research. It premiered on BBC Radio 3 in October 2020, and is available on Spotify.

Wait. Look. Listen.

At the start of 2024 I was invited to write music to accompany Wait. Look. Listen., an exhibition of photography taken in and around the City of London by artist Mark Bishop. I created a soundscape piece combining field recordings (from where the photos were taken) with spoken word and vocal harmony, and wrote The Wind and a Wing inspired by a tour of the city with the artist, and the themes of the exhibition.

A Song for Nanny Mary

I wrote this very personal piece for my nan’s funeral in October 2021, piecing together various bits of her extraordinary story through recordings I’d made of our conversations over the years. I always loved hearing her tell stories about her childhood, the war, and her life as a young woman. A Song for Nanny Mary combines audio of my nan speaking with sung lines echoing and responding to her words, with piano underscoring.

New Musical Theatre

I love musical theatre and have written and performed pieces for showcases including In The Middle for On Hope: A Digital Song Cycle (online at The Other Palace, 2020) and This Is Marc, a verbatim-inspired piece written as a rapid response to the week’s news for NEWSFEED at the Southwark Playhouse (2019).

We Didn’t Know - ELFTin1Voice

In 2021 I helped the East London NHS Foundation Trust to creatively reflect on the pandemic through a songwriting project. Over a series of online workshops staff and service users from across the Trust talked and listened, finding various experiences and reflections in common. Using the words and phrases spoken, we wrote melodies and additional lyrics, resulting in the song We Didn’t Know:

Gather

I wrote this song for a friend’s 40th birthday, trying to reflect something of their deepest values. It was featured on an episode of The Sacred podcast in January 2024, with a beautiful lyric video made by The Sacred team and Emily Downe.

Vocal Painting

Vocal Painting (VOPA) is a sign language for creating music in the moment, bringing compositional form to improvised music. This piece was composed collaboratively by a vocal ensemble live in performance, led with VOPA:

“Green Grass” - created in the moment on 21/5/19 using VOPA (St Paul’s Shadwell)

Singers L-R: Briana Cowlishaw; Harriet Langley; Chloe Ayling; Michelle Augustin; Anna Wawrzyniak; Liz Swain; Sterre Maier; David Corck-Adelman; Ed Blunt; Matt Jones; Kevin Fox.