Writing and Research
I am active as a writer and researcher on composition and contemporary music. Within these fields my particular interests are in experimental music; vocal ensemble music and vocality in new music; microtonality and its application in new music; contemporary music performance. I am also interested in the performance of vocal ensemble music of earlier ages and the vocal music and aesthetics of the Italian Renaissance in particular.
My Durham University research profile can be found here.
Below is a selection of writings both about and by me.
Interviews
Interview with Simon Reynell (another timbre), 2019
Interview with Jack Sheen on Saenredam, 2017
‘How I compose’– contribution to a series of blogs curated by Lee Westwood, 2017
Profile and interview with me by Tim Rutherford-Johnson, 2010
On my own work
On Walled Garden and the locus amoenus in The Sampler here
On Winstanley and The Freedom of the Earth in The Guardian, 9th June 2011 here
On others’ work
Two chapters on Michael Finnissy, ‘Finnissy’s Voices’ and ‘Finnissy’s Hand’, in Pace, Ian and McBride, Nigel,Critical Perspectives on Michael Finnissy (London: Routledge, 2019)
On Cassandra Miller in Tempo (2014) here
On Howard Skempton in The Guardian, 18th February 2010 here
In conversation with Christopher Fox in Tempo (2006) here
Other publications
Editor of CoMA partsongs, volume 1 (2018), an anthology of new experimental music for vocal ensemble