Mountains become oceans concerto for harp and percussion with orchestra (2024) by Angela Elizabeth Slater
Mountains become oceans seeks to transport the listener into a different world and chronological space, drawing parallels to the current extraordinary climatic events on our own planet. When our Sun comes to the end of its current lifecycle, it will become a red giant, engulfing Mercury, Venus, and, most likely, Earth. The Sun will expand, doubling in size and power, allowing the rays to reach the farthest corners of the Solar System. This work follows Titan, one of Saturn’s moons, and a moon of frozen ice mountains. With this event, Titan will see its temperature rise and its ice will melt and form some of the last oceans of our Solar System. The parallels of rising temperatures causing our own glaciers and ice mountains to melt are striking and powerful. For both Titan and Earth, the rising temperatures will bring about profound change that will lead to not only destruction, but offer potential for new life.
Performed by Rosanna Moore (Harp), Hannah Weaver (percussion), and George Jackson (conductor) with the Amarillo Symphony orchestra on 1st March 2025 at the Globe-News Center for the Performing Arts ,500 S Buchanan St , Amarillo, TX 79101 United States
Mountains become oceans seeks to transport the listener into a different world and chronological space, drawing parallels to the current extraordinary climatic events on our own planet. When our Sun comes to the end of its current lifecycle, it will become a red giant, engulfing Mercury, Venus, and, most likely, Earth. The Sun will expand, doubling in size and power, allowing the rays to reach the farthest corners of the Solar System. This work follows Titan, one of Saturn’s moons, and a moon of frozen ice mountains. With this event, Titan will see its temperature rise and its ice will melt and form some of the last oceans of our Solar System. The parallels of rising temperatures causing our own glaciers and ice mountains to melt are striking and powerful. For both Titan and Earth, the rising temperatures will bring about profound change that will lead to not only destruction, but offer potential for new life.
Performed by Rosanna Moore (Harp), Hannah Weaver (percussion), and George Jackson (conductor) with the Amarillo Symphony orchestra on 1st March 2025 at the Globe-News Center for the Performing Arts ,500 S Buchanan St , Amarillo, TX 79101 United States
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Kármán line for large orchestra (2024)
The piece is titled after the boundary separating Earth's atmosphere and outerspace known as the Kármán line. In this piece I wanted to capture the drama of the transitional nature of this space in our sky, where we are home on earth and where we have crossed a threshold into the vacuum of space. Here I want to capture the human desire we have for reaching out, grasping, striving to across a threshold and break through boundaries. a tulip, iron for soprano, tenor, violin, viola and celloby Angela Elizabeth Slater (2023) text by Kendra Preston Leonard
Note from librettist Kendra Preston Leonard:a tulip, iron is about the fear and horror created by psychological and emotional abuse, the relief of escape from abuse, and the work required to contend with traumatic memories of it. Using Perle Fine’s work The Early Morning Garden (1957) as a focusing device for this lyric, I work with elements of the natural world as well as my own personal history. The mezzo soprano and tenor serve as protagonist and antagonist, respectfully, and I’ve made it deliberately unclear as to whether their texts and interactions are taking place in the present or are memories. The text is in three loose sections, through which the protagonist moves from fear and intense self-doubt into greater agency, grapples with the causes and extent of her wounds, recognizes how trauma has shaped her, and becomes able to distance herself from it.The antagonist diminishes and humiliates the protagonist, causing her to hesitate and sing in fragments of sentences. He calls her simple and an embarrassment, disparaging her mind and body and abilities, even as she begins to communicate more fully and lyrically and draws on a wider world for her outlook. Finally, he—or the memory of his words and actions—falls silent, becoming nothing to the protagonist, as she leaves the scene—or memory—with self-determination. Note from the composer Angela Elizabeth Slater: When I approached Kendra for a unique text to set, I asked her to explore memory as something difficult, questioning why certain things happened the way they happened, questioning yourself and whether things were your own fault. I wanted the text to draw on the deep intense emotions that still bubble over the surface from the bullying and gaslighting. I experienced at school. I have found this text deeply emotionally powerful to set. Alongside this, I engaged with the visual stimulus of Perle Fine' s work The Early Morning Garden. Taken together, these helped me find a soundworld that is a mixture of fragility and strength, whilst exploring the nuances of colours and distinct gestural shapes for both the string players and the vocalists. The piece should be treated as an imagined scene from a larger narrative trajectory set ambiguously in memory or somewhere real; perhaps it is both. Duration: c. 10 minutes Sun Catcher for wind quintet (2018)
Sun Catcher for wind quintet was written for the Atéa Wind Quintet commissioned by the 2018 York Late Music concert series . A Sun Catcher is a metal object that spins in the wind capturing the sunlight and creating colourful patterns. There are also many myths and folklore tales related to how the sun was once captured, and either fixed in its proper sphere or else made to stand still in the sky. Other tales explore the idea of capturing the sun and bringing it down so darkness could prevail. Sun Catcher explores both themes, therefore essentially having two different musical ideas happening simultaneously in parts of the piece. The first is serene and expressive exploring shimmering light and colour. The second is a fast, underlating and increasingly agtitated music. This gradually infiltrates each instrument's line and captures the serene music from before, holding it hostage on a manic rampage and race to the end of the piece. |
Orbit's edge for chamber ensemble (2024)
Orbit's edge takes its inspiration from the phenomenon known as the Roche limit, with particular attention to Saturn's ice moons. Saturn previously had many more smaller celestial bodies surrounding it, but these have been lost as they became too close to Saturn and reached their Roche limit. Once this threshold is crossed, the gravitational forces holding them together are overcome and these moons are pulled apart and disintegrate to beomce the planet's iconic rings. *This is a commission from The Aspen Music Festival and School for the 2024 season. Daybreak of dusk for cello and piano 2022
Daybreak of dusk was written for the ‘Piece a day’ project at the Tanglewood Music Festival 2022. Glass dominoes for mixed ensemble 2023 Glass dominoes has been written for the Mostly Modern Ensemble. The work explores the notion of the chain reactions that split and fracture in different directions. There are gestures that cause the knock on effect of another instruments part but sometimes these flows are broken and interrupted by other forces. c. 7 minutes RSNO workshop performance of The Louder the Birds Sing in June 2021
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Ligeti Quartet perform Distorted Light as part of their The Workout! A scheme where their ambition was to play and workshop 100 pieces by 100 composers to celebrate their tenth anniversary.
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Spinning Colours | Faded Time for piano quartet performed by Trio Northumbria and pianist Alison Gill
To know the dark performed by Brightwork ensemble
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Mirage for wind quintet performed by the Magnard Ensemble
Tucked Beneath performed by Daniel Klein and Felix Jarrar
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Night Airs conducted by Lindsey Jones and performed by members of USF NMC
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The Glaciate Falls as part of the Dance with the Winds project
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As the Moon Runs Red for solo trumpet performed by Simon Desbruslais
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Frozen Waterfall
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Nacreous Contours for solo clarinet performed by Dov Goldberg
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Brain Container from joberry on Vimeo. Video of Brain Container Project – Blackpool Illuminations (2014) –
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Through the Fading Hour, Concerto for viola has been written for the London Philharmonic Orchestra Young Composers Programme 2021/22 especially for violists Richard Waters and David Quiggle.
Through the fading hour explores the light qualities and colours that we see during the twilight hours, with the onsetting of darkness and the fading of light. We might also see this moment as the twilight hour of the earth, at least with our presence on it, as the realities of climate change become increasingly evident. The piece emerged from one of my own poems:
Through the fading hour
Whispers morph and mould
A flickering light gives one last breath
Before being blown into the ether
Through the fading hour explores the light qualities and colours that we see during the twilight hours, with the onsetting of darkness and the fading of light. We might also see this moment as the twilight hour of the earth, at least with our presence on it, as the realities of climate change become increasingly evident. The piece emerged from one of my own poems:
Through the fading hour
Whispers morph and mould
A flickering light gives one last breath
Before being blown into the ether