surface and sediment

bass clarinet, guitar, double bass and live electronics

2023 | 25’

• Composed in collaboration with painter Gregory Howard.

• Premiered by Richard Durrant (guitar), Lucía Polo Moreno (contrabass), Hannah Shilvock (bass clarinet), Downstairs Gallery, Brixton and Unit 11 Studios Manchester.

• Supported by the Marchus Trust.

1. Surface I (a): emergent, shifting

2. Surface I (b): brushstroke—curve

3. Surface II (a): tactile—slip

4. Surface II (b): slow motion

5. Surface II (c): object, non-object

Surface and Sediment was developed as part of a collaboration with painter Gregory Howard. Painting and music both negotiate a tension between physical material and digital or artificial mediation, between gesture and object, and the spaces in-between.

In each Surface, the music behaves as if it is continually emerging: gestures shift, blur, and curve, as though being touched or brushed into shape. Layers of live and electronic sound accumulate gradually beneath these surfaces, stretching, repeating and looping through time, allowing small changes of colour or pressure to come into focus. Across the piece, I was interested in the point at which a musical gesture begins to feel like an object, and when that object starts to lose its solidity again—becoming something less fixed, less certain.