Work

Moving forwards looking backwards 

New work in progress…

Making connections with old friends  loose ends
strands of life waiting to be revisited - to be closed or rekindled

TRACKS IN THE MAKING

Lockdown
Mum’s David, by Helicopter Mum

Peppermints and Guns

Peppermints and Guns - a set of solo violin pieces commissioned by Big Ideas for the Centenary Commemoration of World War 1 in 2017 and broadcast on BBC Radio 3 on Armistice Day, 11th November 2017.

A source of inspiration were the letters of correspondence between Wilfred Owen, the poet, and his mother, writing from the trenches. The pieces were written as letters from mothers to their sons fighting on the front lines: letters that were largely lost on the fields of war.

It was a great honour to be asked to write this commission but as I began to immerse myself in the task I realised I had many points of reference from which to draw ideas. In my teens I’d read Vera Britten’s Testament of Youth which really brought home the impact and scale of that war and the very personal impact on Vera and those of her generation.

I also discovered from talking to my own family that my great Uncle Oswald had died at Ypres. My Dad had been given his name as a dedication and I had never known or asked my Dad about the significance or reason for what I had noticed was an unusual name to me.

My real way in to begin the writing was thinking of my own son and writing my own letter to him. 

TRACKS

Dear Oswald
Harrison
Peppermints and Guns
Peace Babies
Fondest Love
Chatter and Patter
No Man's Land
Jeopardy
Cherish
Love Loss Resilience

Corelli Leaves

An orchestral piece written for the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, performed and very well received at London’s Southbank.

Traffic Ocean Archway

A collection of pieces written in ‘The Music Room’

Funded by Arts Council England and Islington Council as part of the A1 regeneration at Archway, North London, where Dick Whittington famously turned back to find his future in London. I occupied a shop space, open to the public, for two weeks in January and March, 2013.

In the first phase I moved into the empty shop space and invited anyone passing by to enter and take time out to share musical experiences, stories and loves. I gave informal concerts at lunchtimes and around 5 to catch commuters, school children, local residents, UAL students… sharing with them a full on intimate violin experience!

What emerged was a collection of pieces I named ‘Traffic Ocean Archway’.

The sound of the traffic, the sirens, the buses turning the corner from the bus station, bled into every piece; it informed the music and the two merged together with all the extraordinary community which inhabited the space to make a unique and transformative experience.

The traffic and people came and went, like the rhythm of ocean waves in the city….

TRACKS

Inisheer
Archway
Ocean Amy
Fly
Traffic Ocean Archway
Moon Sea
Wing
89 mix
Traffic multitrack
Moon Sea Return
Celebration
Archway Sky

50/50

A project of 50 compositions in a year, namely 2013.

I challenged myself to write 50 pieces to celebrate being 50.

I wanted the music to become in a way interactive - I invited requests, challenges, prompts, to take the music in different and unexpected directions

I thought also to draw attention to how rare it is for a woman to openly celebrate and embrace age as a landmark and something to be proud of in a time when both sexism and ageism reign. I noted in my twenties working with Michael Nyman that he was enjoying celebration concerts for his 50th birthday and it seemed to be a uniquely male domain. Apart from the fact that there appeared to be virtually no women composers on the scene; Carla Bley really stood out for me at this time alongside Joni Mitchell and Laurie Anderson. 

A time to notice where society and the work place is a 50/50 balance between the sexes and more noticeably where it is not!

Noticing the percentage of women composers who had works performed in the proms and in current programming - it’s shocking! …there’s room for improvement here!

There were to be 50 strands to the project but one thing I noticed early on was how difficult it was to keep track of the numbers - the challenges and ideas interested me but not the counting!

In my notebook I noticed my number count of works exceeded 50 but many were scraps or threads of ideas that are still incomplete, maybe still waiting to be picked up.

This was a year however where I wrote my first orchestral work, Corelli leaves ( a celebration of a death, not a birth) and wrote Traffic Ocean Archway in my Music Room Project for A Million Minutes. A year of many many things….

Big small and Sideways  

Inspired by the Big Band sound of Carla Bley, Big small and Sideways is scored for 3 strings only - two violins and cello. Three of us, just about a crowd, striving to create that big band energy!

Commissioned by Women in Music and premiered at the London Jazz Festival this isn’t exactly jazz but a nod towards it.

TRACKS

Small
Blaze
Neat and Tidy
Sideways
Tang-to-go

Circus Dreaming

Music created for an outdoor circus with the support of the PRS foundation.

These dynamic pieces stretch the virtuosic powers of the players to match the physicality, agility and rhythm of the circus performers.

TRACKS

Circus Dreaming
The Tower
Spira

Summer Breeze 2002

Luminitza

Luminitza meaning small light or Clare in Romanian was written after a visit to Romania in 1991 following the revolution and the death of Nicolae Ceausescu.

TRACKS

East
Chain
Democracy
Still with me
Link
Revolution
Link again
Luminitza
Mother

Possessed

Balanescu Quartet

Possessed was the first album for Mute Records featuring Clare’s covers of German techno giants Kraftwerk and her David Byrne arrangement Hanging Upside Down.

TRACKS

Robots
Model
Autobahn
Computer Love
Pocket Calculator

Transparencies

Transparencies are a series of solo violin pieces written from 1998 to now…

They are snapshots containing memories, pictures, thoughts, feeling, ideas

They are intimate and exposed 

A sketchbook sound diary