Ed Bennett – Twister (2023)

1 : One that twists. especially : a ball with a forward and spinning motion. 2. : a tornado, waterspout, or dust devil in which the rotatory ascending movement of a column of air is especially apparent.

twist someone’s arm idiom

twist tie

twist/turn the knife (in the wound) idiom

twisted

twister

twisting

twists phrase

twisty

twit

This piece was commissioned with funds from PRS Beyond Borders

Aine Mallon – Arboreal (2023)

Arboreal is a piece about communication between trees. Hub trees, otherwise known as Mother Trees, can recognise their offspring and send communications, warnings and most vitally nutrients to their offspring, as well as other trees. They send electrical pulses through their root systems that travel underground through the web of mycelial network and up through the root systems of other trees. The mycelium that weave through the roots of trees, like an extremely dense web highway, exchange information and nutrients in this symbiotic relationship to allow both fungi and trees to thrive. In Arboreal, the wooden sounds of the percussion and viola weave the narrative of the communication, transformation and reception of these messages from Mother Trees to their young.

Kevin O’Connell – Encuentro

Encuentro is the word used for the confrontation between the matador

and the bull in a corrida It seemed an appropriate image for this musical

encounter between two very contrasting sound-sources Like the bull,

thev iola takes the lead In response, the percussion plots its moves, strategically dodging the viola part while venturing counter-thrusts

of its own. 

This piece was commissioned with funds from PRS Beyond Borders

Siobhan Cleary – Scheherezade ‘The Art of the Trickster’

This was commissioned by Nathan Sherman and Alex Petcu as part of a bigger project by various composers who were asked to reflect on Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious through new work.

One of the most universal archetypes is the Trickster figure. A figure that crosses and often breaks both physical and societal rules, navigating their way through their wit. Scheherazade is a compassionate trickster who uses her skills in speech and storytelling to save herself and countless other women. By ending her captivating stories on a cliffhanger for 1001 nights, she saves herself from the fate of her predecessors. She also makes the strategic decision to begin with misogynistic adultery tales because they are the most likely ones to catch the sultan’s interest. After these opening stories, Scheherazade expands her retinue to include tales of humour , adventure, war, morality, and love. As her stories build one upon the other, the portrait she presents of women becomes much more varied and diverse, revealing a complex assortment of women who are strong, intelligent, and decisive. Many other trickster figures among them , such as Dalila the Wiley and her daughter, Tawaddud, Princess Budur and Miriam the sash- maker.

This piece pays tribute to Rimsky-Korsakov’s “ Scheherazade “ , exploring some of the interior sound world of that piece and bringing it to the fore.

Commissioned by Nathan Sherman and Alex Petcu with funds from The Arts Council / An Chomhairle Ealaíon 

Nick Roth Sophia x Bythos
“In the beginning were Darkness, Chaos, and Water (skotos, kai bythos, kai hydōr), but the Spirit indwelling in the midst of them, divided them one from another. From the intermingling of Darkness with Spirit proceeds the mētra which again is kindled with fresh desire after the Spirit; she gives birth first to four, and then to other four aeons, and so produces a right and a left, light and darkness. Last of all comes forth an aischros aiōn, who has intercourse with the mētra, the offspring whereof are Gods, Angels, Daemons, and Spirits.”

— Epiphanius, Haer. 25, 5

Sophia x Bythos was a collaborative commission from Nathan Sherman and Alex Petcu for The Archetypes Project, responding to themes in Carl Jung’s seminal 1959 work “The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious”.

When I was tasked with the Unconscious itself, my first thought was of water and its reflections, envisioning an immersive work for viola with aquarium, mirror and light. Reading Jung’s work during the research phase, I was thus reassured to read: “Therefore the way of the soul in search of its lost father – like Sophia seeking Bythos – leads to the water, to the dark mirror that reposes at its bottom.” This passage seemed a remarkably affirmative coincidence and eventually became, as a redux, the title of the piece itself.  

Diving deeper into the myth of Sophia, the Gnostic goddess of Wisdom, and her father Bythos, the Abyssic Monad from whence she came, I discovered the Panarion, a 4th century work by Epiphanius, Bishop of Salamis, recounting, and critiquing, the Gnostic genesis myths of his contemporaries. From one such description comes the epigraph above, which served as both the underlying formal structure for the work and a representation of the arisal process of the conscious from unconscious. Each of the images in the passage figures as a motif in the work, with the aischros aiōn, or broken time, taking the form of the belljar, which dictates the rhythmic architecture for the second, conscious, half.

Lastly, curious about the origins of the Greek word mētra (womb), I discovered that it shares etymological roots with the words ‘metre’ and ‘matrix’. This therefore drew a thread between Sophia and the Creation and Annihilation operators, mathematical functions that find widespread use in the study of quantum chromodynamics and harmonic oscillators…light and the possibility of light. This closing of the circle inspired the final piece of the puzzle, with the inclusion of the prismatic.

Sophia x Bythos received its premiere in Café Oto, London on Sunday 18th June 2023. 

Ed Bennett https://edbennett.co.uk/

Aine Mallon https://ainemallon.com/

Kevin O’Connell https://www.cmc.ie/composers/kevin-oconnell#:~:text=Kevin%20O%27Connell%20was%20born,and%20at%20Queen%27s%20University%20Belfast.

Siobhan Cleary https://www.siobhancleary.com/

Nick Roth https://nickrothmusic.com/nrm/index.asp