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Mārū for strings and harpsichord or piano (2025), a chamber symphony, premiered by Orchestra Central, August 23rd, 2025.
Imagine having a piece of music stuck in your head for 40 years.
Now what if that piece of music was just one short bar, namely the second bar of Mozart’s Symphony no. 25. Harmonically, new chords both thicken and undermine the existing progressions, adding allusions to music both before and after Mozart’s time. The end-result is a repetitive, methodically obsessive piece.
Democrazy for solo viola (2025). Written for principal violist in the Auckland Philharmonia, Robert Ashworth.
At the heart of this piece is the music of the London dance clubs…
…of 1995-1999 – loud anarchic electronic music, not just repetitive loops, but vortices that are always on the look-out for the next high, the next big hit.
Democrazy falls musically into a disjointed DJ set, with parts that are all equally obsessed with spirals, springs and bouncy coils, with an inconsistent relationship with speed.
Some twenty years ago, a pattern began repeating itself…
After buying Hillary Hahn’s recording of the Barber concerto, some twenty years ago, a five-note pattern began repeating itself in my ear and thus becoming an earworm. Emerging as if from out of nowhere, it kept sticking around year in, year out. It was as if the only way to get rid of the pattern was to exorcise it through this piece, but before doing so, I had to revisit the Barber concerto – I needed to know how the pattern came to be, what section, which bar number etc. After fastidiously searching the recording and the score, the pattern was nowhere to be found. Could I have imagined the whole thing? In my mind, I could hear Hillary’s phrasing, timbre and velocity. I listened to Bo Linde’s concerto, thinking it may have been a different and Hillary-less performance after all, but no pattern was found. Eventually after five months of digging through every Hillary Hahn album, I found it in Bar 92 of the first movement of Edgar Meyer’s concerto – also on the Barber CD.
Pacific Notion for violin, cello and piano (2023) written for NZTrio He Taonga Wairere’s composer workshops and recorded and released on the album, Bàrru, by Atoll Records.
A piano trio inspired by John Milton’s poem, L’Allegro
This composition emerges as a stream of consciousness that flows, is felt, punctuated, interrupted, shaped, and then crafted. It does not emerge from a verbal place, but from an idea of a certain time and place, namely the urban music of Aotearoa in the early part of this century, especially the sounds heard on “trips” to the clubs and arenas around the country, from electronica, dance, drum & bass to hip hop and trance. These are not styles normally associated with the concert stage nor the piano trio repertoire, but in Pacific Notion, they are weaved together, often blending the three instruments of the trio into sounding like one.
This joyous music, often playful and reflective, is constructed around repetition as a main design feature, repetition in atmosphere — going through motions, the same motions, but never quite the same; with every repeating breath there is a new feeling, new vision, new life, new being, same life – same but always different.
With the origin of the phrase attributed to John Milton, Pacific Notion, takes several cues from Milton’s poem, L’Allegro, as seen in the score; casting off gloom to embrace the delights of a glorious spring day and certainly the idea that a “trip the light fantastic” is to dance nimbly or lightly to music…
May Chaconne (2023) for solo violin. Premiered by Mark Menzies in Christchurch, New Zealand, September 1, 2023. Written in memory of my mum, May Britt Strøm, who passed away, February 15, 2023, from multiple brain tumours.
Something new, but also something old and distant…
The composition is constructed from a basic idea containing only small cells that take a short and o?en seemingly quixotic journey in search of something new, but at the same time also something old and distant.
However, every time the small cells discovers a new clue, they reveal a more complex and kaleidoscopic condition. At some point, May wonders if all the strange things that have happened to her are simply a product of her imagination?
I was struck by this notion, the idea of someone or something invisible digging deeper and deeper, only to find more depth and incredible human strength.
The tessitura and harmonies of the work start simply and expand very gradually, revealing a path that at first traces slowly inward, and then, when it cannot go any further inside itself, soars with reckless abandonment, exploring the enormous range of the violin.
Low Ceiling (2022) for chamber orchestra: 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 pno and strings
Inspired by the poem of the same name by David Yezzi…
This piece was initially conceived as a reflection on first rehearsals, composer reading sessions, competitions…
Sitting patiently in a concert chamber with fellow composers, creators, musicians, parents, friends, spouses – feeling nervous about whether what is written in the score makes any sense at all – feeling emotionally naked and anticipating a complete car crash. The piece is about the time spent nervously waiting…