Adam Swayne premieres ‘Inventions (for Heath Robinson)’ – Interview

Adam Swayne of the Riot Ensemble will give the world premiere of my new set of piano pieces, Inventions (for Heath Robinson), on 2 August.

The pieces will be performed at Riot’s gig at the Petworth Festival in Sussex, alongside a new ensemble piece by Terence Allbright and works by Ann Cleare, Gabriella Smith, Cassandra Miller, Paul Burnell and Klaus Huber.

In advance of the concert, I spoke to Riot Ensemble’s in-house writer, Tim Rutherford-Johnson, about this piece, its relationship to the illustrations of Heath Robinson, and other relevant matters:

I’ve always been interested in the word ‘Inventions’ as a generic title…it signals compositional craft, but also flights of fancy…the rigour of Bach’s Inventions as well as the imaginative conjuring of worlds that don’t exist yet. I sort of had the idea that these pieces would be ‘inventions’, then it made me think of the third suggestion of what ‘inventions’ can mean – mad inventors working on eccentric contraptions: Leonardo da Vinci, Nikola Tesla, Jacques de Vaucanson. The stereotype of mad hair and mad ideas and no sleep…the goggles and the apron.

Heath Robinson is all the detail and ingeniousness of a ‘productive’ inventor, with the productiveness surgically removed. A revered inventor – Edison, say – is revered for finding brilliant and carefully-considered answers to retrospectively important questions we didn’t know we were asking. But Heath Robinson’s inventions are brilliant and carefully-considered answers to questions we would have been silly to ask in the first place. I love that.

The full interview can be read here.