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On Thursday 5th November 2026 (8pm) at St Peter's Anglican Church in Canterbury - at a Free Range event called 'Remember, remember' - we revisit an old work of mine. Bucolia (2004) was originally written for Owen Hewson (clarinet), Lorna Braddy and myself (violins), Tom Spencer (cello) and Aidan Shepherd (piano) as an A-level assignment. Bucolia is corruption of bucolic and 'folia' from the well-known Portuguese Folia theme from the 15th Century - a theme that has often inspi

https://youtu.be/ipYaADrXtu0 The Words of the Host to the Physician and the Pardoner appears in the sixth fragment of The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer. These Tales were told by Pilgrims as they travelled from London to Canterbury to visit the shrine of Thomas Becket at Canterbury Cathedral. The stories were often used to paint an ironic and critical portrait of English Society, provoking much discussion from the 14th century onwards, particularly about issues of soc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LCjudnKisjw Recorded by Sacconi Quartet during the first Covid-19 lockdown - Summer 2020 In this single movement work for string quartet, the players collectively portray the life of the nine candles of the menorah. Throughout much of the work, I chose to keep the texture quite thin. At least, if one were to study the printed score, the texture would often appear sparse. However, I have focused on sustaining much energy and activity so that whe

My inspiration began when I experienced the hot summer air. I started to imagine a series of soporific portamentos against an implied E-flat tonal back-drop. In conversation, Martin Outram had once made the comment that the solo viola could be used for its bright qualities in the high register in contrast with its dark qualities in the low register, With this point strongly in mind, I began to explore the possibility of incorporating viola into the intensely glittery glockens

In 2010, I received a commission from my A-level chemistry teacher, Dr Duncan MacKay, a poet and astrophysicist, who had recently retired from teaching. He asked me to write a new work for soprano and string quartet, Caelestialis (2011), to be performed following his lecture at the Simon Langton Grammar School for Boys on the subject of Arts versus Science. Whilst leaving the musical and stylistic aspects of the task very wide open, he encouraged me to focus on the unnerving