Bodleian Library/Oxford Lieder commission

I’ve been made the ‘Albi Rosenthal Visiting Fellow in Music’ at Oxford University’s Bodleian Libraries. I’ll be writing a work for voice & piano for soprano Anna Dennis, inspired by materials in the library, for the Oxford Lieder Festival in October 2021.

I’m particularly interested in the library’s collection of ‘ephemera’ – old adverts, leaflets, notices, children’s games etc. I’ll be piecing together fragments of text and forming my own texts to set. It’s a technique I’ve used previously in Beautiful Caged Thing (fragments of Oscar Wilde) and I Find Planets (fragments from the Twitterbot @I_Find_Planets).

The new piece will be premiered by Anna at the festival (hopefully in front of a live audience). I’m also delighted the festival are programming other pieces of mine – more news to follow…