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Orchestral & Band Music
Strata (for orchestra) was composed in 2013, inspired by a poster (from the early years of trade unionism) which depicted class as a pyramid with the monarchy at the top and the workers supporting the whole edifice at the base. It made a blunt, naïve statement which seemed ripe for musical interpretation. The upper 'strata' recur throughout the piece, framed by the relentless mechanistic music of the workers with which the music begins and ends.
Cuba (for brass band) was composed in 2002 and was judged winner of the Leeds University/Black Dyke Band composers' competition that year.
Tower of Babel (1988) was commissioned by the Charterhouse Concerts Society for the Salomon Orchestra who performed it in Oxford, at Charterhouse and in London (St John's, Smith Square) under Nicholas Braithwaite. The music is built around sets of distinct elements (high or low, melodic or rhythmic) which for the most part exist independently of one another.
The Enemy Within (for brass band) was composed between 2004 and 2010. The title is taken from Thatcher’s speech in which she compared the threat of striking miners to that of the Argentine invasion of the Falkland Islands: "In the Falklands we had to fight the enemy without. Here is the enemy within”. The piece is as much autobiographical as political, predominantly a lament for those cultures and communities which were destroyed. There are two movements: both begin slowly before breaking into faster, rhythmic music.
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