Selected Compositions
Conditions
2023
for ensemble & live electronics
Commissioned by Ensemble Klang
In Conditions the musicians are shaping the conditions of the space, before performing in reaction to the space. The performance space is usually a fixed parameter and the musician gets acquainted with the space during a dress rehearsal. In Conditions the sound of the space is not fixed and each of the six musicians have control in virtually changing the shape and size of the performance space. The changing sound of the space is acoustically supported and accentuated by the written music. Every time the shape of the space changes, the performance of a second layer of musical material can come alive; an echo game between the space and the musician.
A Deviation for Approximation
2022
Roulette
2020
Popularity
2020
For Audience & electronics
Commissioned by Post-Paradise, UK
This work was commissioned by Audio Art Festival (PL) and Post-Paradise (UK). I created this work in the middle of the pandemic and I tried to create something that could be performed at the online edition of the Audio Art festival in Krakow (PL) and the online concerts of Post-Paradise in Birmingham (UK). I created a computer application for an online audience to perform with. It is a playful interactive video performance for the audience. The audience creates the music by interacting with my self-build computer application: The audience can make videos appear by clapping; sings to make the videos bigger; jumps to rearrange the videos and blows wind to move the videos off the screen.
Formation de Sarah 2019/ Formation de Mark 2020
for Solo Instrument & Electronics
Commissioned by Another Timbre, UK
Written for Sarah Saviet and Mark Knoop
This work was written for Mark Knoop on request of Another Timbre for the album All English Music is Greensleeves, released by Another Timbre in 2019. My compositional process started by asking an untrained singer to sing each note of a given scale. She was asked to sing each note until it was correct, and because she never had any music lessons, she experienced a very long but interesting process until reaching the correct notes. I recorded her (long) process and implanted the process in a self-build computer application. In the performance of Formation the pianist is required to route each recorded sung pitch closer to the target pitch. This task is accomplished by performing chords written in a maze-structured game-score and in interaction with the self-build computer application: The computer-microphone analyses the played chord and makes the sound of the voice travel through a maze. When the pianist has not quickly enough placed the voice in the correct tuned position, the computer will complain with the word “No”. The maze is structured in relation to the process of the untrained singer and the game will therefore make it equally difficult for the professional pianist the reach the goal of tuning the voice.
Preview the Formation de Sarah score here
Original piece was recorded by Mark Knoop [UK] for Another Timbre
Current video is an iteration of the piece performed by Marlies Cornelis[BE]
Sanding
2020
for piano on a beach
Commissioned by Dag in de Branding Festival, NL
Written for Saskia Lankhoorn
This work was commissioned by Saskia Lankhoorn for Dag in de Branding festival in The Hague, (NL). Saskia organized a concert on the beach and the festival positioned several pianos on the beach for her to perform on. I created a place-specific work which involved pouring sand into the piano. The musical material I composed for the pianist was derived from the sound of sand. I more specifically took the recordings from my performance of Beach Bums, a work by Robert Blatt. In this performance I roll in the sand with a camera on my head. To make Saskia’s score of “Sanding” I created a computer application that selects pitches from one roll in the sand but deletes common pitches in the next roll in the sand and adds pitches again in the next roll. I transcribed this process for Saskia to perform on the piano and the process of creating this musical material is also conceptually supported by the performance of it. In the performance of “Sanding”, Saskia plays this written musical material and I approach the piano to slowly pour sand into the piano. In this live process, the piano hammers are increasingly being blocked by the sand from hitting the strings in the piano, leaving a selection of notes to sound.
A Hard Day’s Night
2018
for 6 – 12 electric guitars
Commissioned by Ensemble Klang, NL
In this work I question the etiquettes of a Contemporary Classical Music audience. I make the audience aware of it and break their usual routines. A Contemporary Classical Music audience rarely shouts ‘Woo!’ out of appreciation for a performer, in contrast to a Rock concert where audiences are sometimes so loud that you are unable to hear the music. When this happens at Rock concerts it seems to me that the audience creates their own music with their shouting voices. Such events are documented in many concerts by The Beatles in the 1960s, and are also parodied in the movie A Hard Day’s Night. During my compositional process I was reminded of this movie and decided to make direct reference to it. In my work A Hard Day’s Night I hold a large sign with ‘Woo!’ written on it in bold letters. In doing so, I insinuate that the audience should shout “Woo!” when I display the sign. If the audience reacts and makes a sound, my self-built computer programme analyses the pitches they shout and creates a chord for the performers to play. In some performances this chord can alter the musical material the performers are already playing. In other performances the musicians simply play the analyzed chord created by the audience.
Preview the score here
Song & Dance – An excessively elaborate effort to explain or justify
2017
Written for Ensemble Modern Academy, DE
Commissioned by Ulysses Network
Composers often talk about their work in order to justify it, and when they do, they analyse it. To directly highlight the theme of justification in this piece, I developed an idea for the ensemble to not receive any written music from me, but rather receive a justification of the music instead. They receive a musical analysis of the work, rather than a conventionally notated version of the work. While performing my piece, they are directly engaged with this justification of the piece. The material I analysed is in three sections: A, A’ and B, and is reconstructed as a three-part music analysis game. Playing the game recomposes the work but most importantly, the musicians have complete insight into the construction of the piece. To play the game they have to use the analysis material and follow the rules, which I constructed and developed from my analysis of an existing piece.
Darmstadt Hugging Music
2016
In 2016 I participated in the Composer-Performer workshop, mentored by Jennifer Walshe and David Helbich and taking place at the Darmstadt Summer Course. I was excited to meet new people and to share ideas about different ways of working in the world of contemporary music, but my experience of the course was very different from what I had expected. I noticed that the participants were very critical of each other’s work, and there was a sense of aggressive competition everywhere. These observations provided the impetus for a socially engaging performance-intervention. I decided to counter the hostility and divisiveness that I witnessed with a positive gesture of care, by hugging all the composers and performers attending the final presentation of the Composer-Performer workshop whilst wearing a red t-shirt printed with the words: ‘I LOVE DARMSTADT’. My waist was covered in hundreds of fabric bracelets, which I would distribute to each person as I hugged them, thus preventing me from hugging the same person twice. In total 220 people received hugs over the course of the three-hour event. Later on in the evening, when people were still socializing in and around the gallery, I noticed that audience members were hugging each other in order to collect more bracelets, or to confer a bracelet on someone who had not been hugged.
All English Music is Greensleeves – Solo
2016
For accordion
Written for Howard Skempton
While questioning the medium of the score, I decided to build a direct (analog) feedback system between the performer and the score. There is a microphone attached to the accordion and a speaker under the score. The microphone is directly connected to the speaker via a small audio mixer. Therefore, whenever the instrument is played, the sound is fed back to the score. The score has note-heads crafted from pieces of lightweight foam. When the performer attempts to play the melody written on the score, the microphone transfers the sound to the speaker, which makes the score vibrate and displaces the notes, creating a constantly changing melody. The score is projected in real-time onto a large screen so that the audience can see how the note-heads change, and can also bear witness to the player’s struggle to read the notes. This work was written for Howard Skempton for Frontiers Festival in Birmingham and this video shows a performance of Howard in Amsterdam. This work was also recorded by Kate Halsall for my album Trace.
Preview the score here
All Verlaak’s Music is Alouette
2014
For Violin, Double bass Harp, Bassoon, Oboe, Percussion, Tuba
Written for London Sinfonietta
Commissioned by Sound & Music, London, UK
Rewritten for ACM ensemble Manchester (UK)
for Huddersfield festival
All English Music is Greensleeves
2014
For violin, viola, cello, double bass, harp, trumpet, trombone, oboe, flute, clarinet, marimba vibraphone
Written for Thallein Ensemble
Frontiers festival Birmingham, UK
Re-writen in 2019 for Apartment House
My former teacher in The Hague, Gilius Van Bergeijk, once joked that all English composers ever do, is rewrite Greensleeves over again and when I moved to the UK in 2013, I was told about the very good sight-reading practice among UK musicians. Thinking about this, I started questioning the nature of the musical score in general, and asked myself the question, what if the notes on the score aren’t the pitches musicians should play to hear the music, but the pitches that make them stop playing the music? The “music” is variations on Greensleeves pre-recorded by each instrument in the ensemble. The notes on the musicians’ score parts are pitches that may or may not stop the pre-recorded music that is being played back through tactile speakers on the instruments. The job of the players is to guess the next note in a melody, controlled by a computer program and played through the instruments. As a result there are two sounding layers, the pre-recorded music (layer 1), which is started or stopped by a computer program and controlled by the pitches the musicians choose to play (layer 2). Rather than dictating which notes to play, this score gives instructions in how to listen. It deconstructs the convention of the score but also questions the practice of the ensemble musician.
A full and reworked version of the score is available here