composer
score available from Wise Music program note This piece is dedicated to Estonian composer Arvo Pärt, and particularly in respect to his Cantus in Memoriam Benjamin Britten (1977). I first heard it in 1987 as a 20-year-old undergraduate student. I was deeply impressed and some months later in 1988, I attempted a similar mensuration canon … Read more
Youtube score available from Wise Music note This suite of orchestral pieces were written for different orchestral forces as stand-alone works but can be played together due to their programmatic connection in the following order: 90 Minutes Circling the Earth 4 Minutes in a Nuclear Bunker Moments of Falling 4 Hours in a Holding Pattern
YouTube YouTube interviews score available from Wise Music program note i. Preview #1 2’ ii. Preview #2 1’ iii. Double Planet 8’ iv. Day and Night 4’ This symphony is concerned with miniaturisation, self-similarity and transformation. The shorter preview movements are ‘fast-forward’ representations of the two longer movements which themselves respond to pictures by the … Read more
YouTube score available from Wise Music program note i: 13 billion years of light ii: clocks of light tick down to iron time The title of this symphony and its two movements are taken from the poem Supernova by Ross Baglin, which in turn reflects the birth of elements and the age of the known … Read more
YouTube score available from Wise Music program note i. Sputnik (1957) ii. Voyager (1977) iii. Pathfinder (1997) iv. Messenger (2004) Human exploration is in our DNA. There’s not much left on the seven continents of our planet that is left undiscovered. So we go underwater and we go into space. As scientific capability has advanced, … Read more
Spotify YouTube interview CD available The Magic Island TSO, Ben Northey (cond.) Hush score available from Wise Music program note Arriving on a clear night by plane often provides beautiful views of a city’s lights mapping out the electric architecture of human civilisation. It’s a welcoming image – the guiding lights for travellers arriving at … Read more
score available from Wise Music program note Kosciuszko is Australia’s tallest mountain. It is far from the being the world’s tallest mountain but in my mind, as a young boy, it stood imperious and alone. Finally, at the tender age of 38, I stood at its peak and looked down and around at the country … Read more
score available upon request note also available for soprano and piano text Letters to the Front (1915-1975) Fromelles, July 1975: How should I hope to find your grave Among white stones that never gave The mud a name for the missing? Four deep, annealed in green The silence of buried iron, The straying light of … Read more
Soundcloud excerpt score available from Reed Music program note The title of this piece refers to the height at which spacecraft orbit the Earth, and by extension what the planet looks like from up there. Pictures of Earth taken from space certainly conjure feelings of majestic elation to my mind and I have attempted to … Read more
score available from Wise Music program note Contrary to visions of a delayed landing approach from hell, the title 4 Hours in a Holding Pattern actually refers to a uniquely wonderful flight from St. Petersburg to London. Taking off at sunset, the plane impossibly follows the sun and lands four hours later, still in sunset. … Read more