Dark Dance

This is perhaps one of the most unusual pieces I have ever written. It is basically a perverse viola concertino, where the viola’s material remains almost completely disparate from the energised, angular music which surrounds it. The accompanying ensemble are treated as one unit, which sets the viola against the rest. Structurally, the piece never settles, climaxes, arrives, or feels confident in what it is trying to say: it loops within small, boxed-in corners, and continuously tries to become unstuck from itself, with little success. I suppose with this piece I am experimenting with these ideas of unusual structures and methods with which to handle musical material: my recent output has been predominantly of music with extremely clear structures and narrative, from which I wanted to escape in this work. It was very much a cleansing and enlightening experience for me to write this piece. Its writing acted as a means to lift me from my rut of writing the same music over and over and over...