You can only play and listen to so much music before it’s got to escape somehow.
I see composition and songwriting as a natural (and unavoidable) side-effect!
As a commissioned composer, I have experience writing for musicians of varying styles and skill sets. With a classical upbringing, I'm very fluent with notation and larger ensembles. Whether it's a full orchestra, a chamber group, or a solo performer, I understand how to craft music that uses the instrumentation effectively while meeting your needs and vision.
I'm also adept at providing arrangements and interpretations of existing music. If you have a piece that needs a fresh perspective or a new arrangement to suit different instrumentation, I can help bring it to life in a way that honours the original while adding a unique touch.
It's not all choirs and classical ensembles, though! I'm just as at home in more modern and contemporary genres. In my own time I'm a self-professed metalhead, with leanings towards jazz, hip hop, and prog. I spend a lot of my time as a performer breaking down the common conventions found in pop music, in order to play them for an audience. This experience is valuable when it comes to collaborating with artists - co-writing or advising on songwriting and production.
In addition to composition, I offer services in music transcription, orchestration, and music theory tutoring. You could be looking to develop a new piece from scratch, reimagine an existing work, or simply enhance your understanding of music – I'm and able here to help!
Composer
Media
Aurora Borealis (Scenes from Arctic Landscapes)
(for brass band, 2013)
Originally written as part of my final year composition portfolio at Salford University, Aurora Borealis is a tone poem for brass band, intended to evoke imagery and sensations of the Northern Lights, and the arctic North. As listeners, we're taken from the initial emergence and fanfare of the titular lights, through a further meditation on the original theme, to scenes of chaotic, tumultuous seas. The commotion eventually builds to a sweeping view of a vast, snowy, yet bleak landscape – to build yet again into the piece's finale and restatement of the original theme.
Musically, the piece takes inspiration from the tradition of brass band contest music – there are several nods to composers such as Peter Graham, Philip Sparke, Eric Ball and John McCabe. At the time I was starting to discover an interest in extended harmony and bitonality, which can be found in brief moments of the music.
I eventually entered the piece into the 2014 Fodens Composition Competition, where it claimed 1st place. The piece was used for the Allan Withington International Conducting School, and eventually was performed by Fodens Band at the Birmingham Symphony Hall – a performance which was broadcast on BBC Radio 2's 'Listen to the Band' program.
Laudate Dominum
(for choir, organ, brass + percussion, 2017)
Laudate Dominum is an attempt to capture the general ambience and emotion found in the paintings of John Martin (1789 – 1854). The subject matter of Martin's paintings were often gargantuan, cavernous landscapes, often depicting religious or historical events in an imposing or catastrophic way. The overwhelming impression I got when viewing them for the first time was that Martin had a terrible and vengeful God to pray to.
The intent from the start was to try and balance the wonder, and the horror, of Martin's idea of God. The chosen literature for the lyrics – excerpts from Psalm 150 – are celebratory in nature, exclaiming that we should 'praise him with the sound of the trumpet', and 'praise him with stringed instruments and the organ'. The arrangement around this main melody, while beginning in a fanfare-like, declamatory manner, quickly passes through several more sinister musical settings, unsettling the original sense of triumph and celebration. The original fanfare eventually manages to claw it's way back into the focus, only to be interrupted and undermined once again by a completely different fanfare. This newcomer takes us around some far-flung harmonic changes, only for the entire ensemble and choir to land on a definitive, but harmonically neutral, unison A-flat for the final resolution.
I'd worked with Chesterfield Philharmonic Choir prior to this piece – they premiered the original choral arrangement of my piece, 'Dreams' (see below). I was thrilled when they got back in touch, and requested a program opener written for choir, brass, organ and percussion. The emphasis was on practicality and making sure the piece was relatively easy to pull together for a performance – there were only limited rehearsals with the full ensemble available. I found it to be an enjoyable challenge – keeping the intended musical ideas, while making them as accessible to the performers as I could. It proved to be an extremely valuable lesson in both arrangement and in the ethos of 'less is more'!
Performed here by the Chesterfield Philharmonic Choir, Carlton Main Frickley Brass, and Jonathan Scott.
Nemesis
(as part of From Her Ashes, 2022)
I was a member of Derby tech-metal band, From Her Ashes, from 2017 to early 2024. During that time I took a large role in the writing and recording of the band's new material, alongside being the band's bass player and 'clean' vocalist.
'Nemesis' was expanded and re-arranged from a demo I'd recorded back in 2017 – the band suggesting structural re-jigs and with frontman Joseph providing the lyrical and vocal content. As a band, we were looking for a 'single' track, and the original riffs and ideas for 'Nemesis' fit the bill. In the band's vernacular: 'big sledgehammer riffs'!
The song doesn't follow a typical verse/chorus stucture, instead basing it's progression around a series of varying melodic 'cells'. The entire track gets split in two by a brief drum machine break (supplied by drummer, Ash Holden), only to open up into an expansive, chordal variation on the main 'cell' riff. I'm particularly proud of the string arrangement over the top of this (2:19 onwards) – it was my first foray into 'classical'-style arrangement in quite some time!
'Nemesis' went on to be a live favourite for fans of the band, and definitely helped convert some newcomers who hadn't heard of us before. And it's a lot of fun to play.
Dreams
(for large sax ensemble, 2020)
'Dreams' originally took the form of a choral piece, based upon a Langston Hughes poem of the same name, that featured in my final year composition portfolio at university. I had recently taken an interest in the music of Eric Whitacre and Morten Lauridsen – this piece was an early attempt (I'm still going!) to emulate and understand their harmonic languages.
Cat (the wonderful Saxophonique!) approached me about re-arranging the piece for large sax ensemble during 2020 – she dutifully took it upon herself to recreate every part in this impressive rendition during the lockdown of 2020. Having such an accomplished performer available, and now writing for wind instruments – not limited by the textural 'washiness' of choral voices – I took the opportunity to add some moving parts and strange, rhythmic interjections at appropriate and climatic moments in the piece. I was amused to find the effect ended up being not dissimilar to a cuckoo clock! (2:03 onwards)