Willem Buurman Pylon Fields

Rebekah Dickinson | viola
Jinglei Li | piano

Pylon Fields was inspired by walking between long chains of electricity pylons crossing open land. Pylons emit faint, static-like noises above a constant hum. I began to imagine them as also generating their own music alongside these sounds, as if they were giant installations or radio towers. The structure of the piece grew from the idea of the shifting textures one might encounter while moving between them: moments when the music feels dense and immediate, dissolving into diffuse layers of noise and grain.

Emily Pedersen Florescence

I. Like Poppies Heavy with Seed
II. The Sun Poured in Like Butterscotch
III. Fast Enough to Fly Away

Caroline Durham | violin
Sergej Cavic | piano

Florescence is about flowering. Each movement imagines a different stage for a flower or seed pod: blooming, bursting and dissipating. These qualities are explored through musical material is taken from song lines by Kate Bush (“like poppies heavy with seed”), Joni Mitchell (“the sun poured in like butterscotch”) and Tracey Chapman (“fast enough to fly away).

Molly Arnuk golden thread, lifeboat

Julian Woods | guitar
Geneviene Liew | piano

Descriptions of boatmaking in Homer’s The Odyssey have been cited as evidence of the existence of sewn boats (boats which use fibres to stitch together their planks) in Ancient Greece. In The Odyssey, Odysseus is held captive as Calypso’s lover for 7 years before escaping to return to his wife. Calypso, known for weaving on a golden loom, provided him with the materials to build the boat on which he left her. I wonder if there was an implication, now lost, that the boat was held together by her weaving fibres.

golden thread, lifeboat takes two quotes from Mille Regretz, a 16th century chanson attributed to Josquin des Prez, and processes them through the theorized patterns in which boat planks were sewn together. Blocks of the quotes are gradually revealed through continuous reordering.

Pernille Faye Kvark

Daisy Elliot | violin
Xin Jiang | piano

Kvark is a vivid exploration of energy and shape through the lens of quarks; the fundamental particles that constitute all matter. Their intrinsic properties (colour charge, electric charge and spin) fuel rapid motifs and shifting rhythms, with contrasting, stiller sections providing glimpses of stability before the music collides once again.

André Serra Recollections

I. and may the rest of my life be togethercoloured with your memory
II. Matins
III. [   ];
IV. even your silhouette thaws our past into silk
V. Evensong

Waverly Long | viola
Meizhu Chen | piano

Recollections is a sequence of five short movements that explores memory and the process of remembering. Rather than presenting memories as fixed objects from the past, the piece explores the act of collecting and recollecting memories as something active, unstable, and firmly rooted in the present. I like to think of remembering as a togethercolouring; a delicate and mutual process of co-alteration built through layers of paint. Recollections does not attempt to reconstruct events. Instead, it lingers on the sensation of remembering itself drawing attention to the coexistence of closeness and distance, and the tenderness that emerges from it.

Lucy Ho lmes Red Lullaby

Izzy Grant | violin
Alex McChrystal | piano

Yuyang Li Diapsalmata

I. … but the music is charming
II. the ambiguity basic to laughter
III. salmon/sentimentality
IV. one ought to be a riddle
V. … for our dull eyes

Helena Thomas | violin
Alfredo Van Der Munt | piano