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Sunday, 22 nd of March 2026 #StPatricksDay #StGilesConsort #Taverner #DumTransisset #SeaSymphony #Dawn #DavidBevan #   Yes. St Patrick’s Day lasts at least a week. My final celebration was a Guinness with the St Giles Consort after a wonderful concert featuring some lesser known masterpieces – Taverner Dum Transisset, Clemens Non Papa Fremuit Spiritu Jesus, Lassus Eripe Me. The Taverner is an old favourite of mine. I have happy memories of singing it with David Bevan at Holy

Tuesday, 17 th of March 2026 #composing #composernotebook #Tide #SeaSymphony   Lá Fhéile Pádraig sona daoibh!   Irish roots run deep, especially in Tide which opens with an ancient Irish melody, at once celebrating and fearing the sea. So it was appropriate to start our St Patrick’s Day celebrations at the Irish College in Leuven, created by the connections (by sea) between Ireland, Spain and Brabant in 1600. There we enjoyed performances by Les Fous de Bassan, Aindrias de S

Tuesday, 10 th of March 2026 #composing #composernotebook #Splash #SeaSymphony   It’s a great moment, finishing a piece. But scary too. Is it OK? I don’t know. I need to pluck up the courage to listen to the MP3 playback. Ready? I’m listening now and really enjoying it! It’s full of expectation and surprises. Just like the splash from the sea. Regular irregularity. Or, irregular regularity. I’ll ask a couple of friends to do quality control.   Then, I’ll get to work tidying

Monday, the 16 th  of February 2026  #SeaSymphony #Splash #orchestra #  I am composing. Without my notebook. Without my laptop. Just letting the sounds in my head gestate, fester, morph. Who knows where this will go.     Most of the second movement, Splash (from Sea Symphony), is written. It's there, in notation, even orchestrated. But there's a big hole. In fact, two big holes. Right now, I don't know how to fill them. I have some ideas in my notebook. I have even worked up

Sunday, the 8 th of February 2026     #Tide #LondonRepertoireOrchestra #NewMusic #Orchestral #DominicMcGonigal #SeaSymphony   Sung part of Victoria Requiem (SATB) at St Patrick’s Soho this morning.   Reminded of singing it here a few weeks ago and being inspired to have a cantus firmus in the finale of Tide (fourth movement of Sea Symphony). At the time, I had the big theme (see below, written while waiting on the sad souls bench at Waitrose). But I had only a hazy impressio

Monday, the 2 nd of February 2026     #LondonRepertoireOrchestra #NewMusic #Orchestral #DominicVeall #SteveChowne #DominicMcGonigal #OwenHo #SeaSymphony   I am enjoying learning these four scores for the London Repertoire Orchestra new works session on Wednesday. They are very different and all will be fun to play. Dominic Veall’s Preludio and Montuno Meltdown has Latin rhythms and lots of fun solos for most instruments. Steve Chowne’s Ten Minute Symphony is just that – four

Friday, the 30 th of January 2026 #MusicRights #Musicians #Artists #IMARA #SeaSymphony   In Paris for a board meeting of IMARA, the global organisation for music performers. Exciting to have been asked to set up this new organisation and continue to work to improve the rights of musicians. Having led the campaigns in Europe to get an extra 20 years of copyright and then streaming rights, I am now in a position to make improvements worldwide, especially in AI.  I was able to

Sunday, the 25th of January 2026  #Mokafe #Brussels #Splash #SeaSymphony #BrusselsCathedral #GuntherVanDeven #LaurentFobelets #GalerieDuRoi #notebook #composing #gestation #orchestra #symphony #violin #flute #brass   I am in my favourite café in Brussels, Mokafe. It’s a wonderful old style café brasserie in the glorious Galerie du Roi, an indoor shopping arcade built in 1846. It has no background music so it is perfect for the gestation process in composing.   I have just com

Friday, the 2 nd of January 2026  #notebook #Tide #SeaSymphony #SciathlúireachMhuire  It’s been fun looking back at my notebooks and seeing the emergence of Tide, the 4 th movement of the Sea Symphony. It started as a harmonic shape, rooted on a pedal D. That was one of those moments when I woke in the middle of the night (3am on 3 rd September, to be precise) and had to write down the sketches. I have a miniature pad of manuscript paper by my bed for such emergencies.  Ne

Saturday, the 29 th of November 2025, evening  #SunsetAtSea #premiere #première #SeaSymphony #SheffieldChamberOrchestra #LaurencePerkins  The première. It’s an incredible feeling hearing the sounds in your head come to life. I introduced the piece at the concert, saying that Sunset At Sea was the music that was swirling in my head sitting on the rocks in West Clare watching the sun set over the Atlantic – the murmuring violins, the overlapping waves of the oboe and clarinet,

Wednesday, the 26 th of November 2025, very early morning  #Tide #SeaSymphony #SciathlúireachMhuire  I just woke up with a map of the final section of the 4th movement. I reached for my miniature pad of manuscript paper but it was not there. I had to get out of bed to get my notebook. It now has a structure for the model transposition of the cantus firmus, an augmented version of the ancient Irish melody which opens the movement and the figuration to turn it into a grand fi

Monday, the 24th of November 2025  #Tide #SeaSymphony #composing   Sometimes it’s difficult to commit. The big theme in the middle section of the fourth movement has been going round my head for three weeks now, gradually filling out with counter melodies and ever more beautiful similarities from adding instruments into the top line as well as underneath. But somehow I hold back from committing the full orchestration of the section because I think something better will come a

Sunday, the 23rd of November 2025  Composing On The Train  #composing #orchestrating #inspiration   I arrived early to sing at all Saints, Fulham, so I had the chance to spend 15 minutes on the 4th movement in the lovely coffee shop opposite Putney Bridge tube. I did some work on the middle section on the train yesterday to Buxted but I was too tired last night to transfer my notes on the printout onto MuseScore. So this morning was a good opportunity to flesh out the orchest

Sunday, the 9th of November 2025  #composing #inspiration #Tide #SeaSymphony    A day full of music – singing Victoria Requiem a 4 this morning at St Patrick’s Soho, listening to new music from the Carr Consort conducted by Gavin Carr, singing Byrd 4 part mass and Vaughan Williams Valiant For Truth. In between, I find time to work on the 4th movement of the sea symphony. Inspired by the cantus firmus in the Victoria Requiem, I worked on a possible Cantus Firmus for the finale

Friday, the 7 th of November 2025  #inspiration #SeaSymphony #Tide   I’ve just been to see The Choral, released today. So now I have Dream of Gerontius in my head, replacing the big theme in the 4 th movement of the Sea Symphony. Gerontius is such a powerful piece and I freely admit I cried several times during the music. I was reminded of hearing the Priest’s Go Forth at my grandfather’s funeral then, a few years later, playing the Angel’s Farewell for my grandmother’s fun

Thursday, the 6 th of November 2025  #composing #Tide #SeaSymphony   Pasta and Polyphony (aka Thursday Night), four friends round to eat, drink and sing. They asked me about the composition process, which is still a mystery to me. What comes first, melody or harmony? My notebook has fragments of melody and whole tunes (including the big theme in the 4 th movement). It also has harmonies – oscillating chords or full harmonic sequences. The big theme has been matched with one

Sunday, the 2 nd of November 2025  #Tide #SeaSymphony #composing #notebook   I left my notebook in Sheffield – I'm used to forgetting things now and almost always have a contingency in place. I started a new notebook today and got to use it during breaks in a day out – glorious singing in Ealing Abbey, a feast for the eyes at the Brands Museum, coffee and a snack in Ladbroke Grove, then shopping. It is then that I needed time out, after overload. I sat like a lost soul on a