recent projects
Deal Music and Arts Festival - Young Artist in Association 2024
Curated three events as Young Artist in Association inspired by Deal's unique landscape and history, including electronic reimaginings of French baroque preludes, UK premieres of works by local composers, and a community beach clean and music workshop using single use plastic.
CLASSICAL PRIDE: A Proud Future
Invited to perform at the Barbican's Classical Pride: A Proud Future concert in July 2023 with guitarist Declan Hickey, including the premiere of Honey-Sweet by Toby Anderson, commissioned by the festival.
Open Recorder Days Amsterdam Fringe 2023
Presented a solo recital of new works for recorders and electronics, written for and in collaboration with Lizzie, by composers Cem Güven, Andrea Balency-Béarn and Elliott Park, at the Open Recorder Days Amsterdam festival in July 2023.
FLOODPLAIN
Our world is made from water, threaded through with rivers and surrounded by sea.
Inspired by the impacts of drought and flooding across the UK and Europe in summer 2022, this programme both explores the tie that rivers provide between nature and our human world in a time when these seem more and more separate, and muses on what a future might look like.
Four new works for recorders, harp and narrator stand alongside improvisations guided by fragments of text and images to create to create a long form musical experience which flows, like a river, through many changing moods, characters and stories.
Music: Lucy Callen, Archie John, Mary Offer, Declan Molloy
Text: Madeleine Walder, Alice Oswald, Mary Offer, Jemma Borg
Toward the Sea
Renaissance and medieval songs dialogue with contemporary music for recorder, guitar and electronics, inspired by the sounds of the sea and the movement of breath. Part of an ongoing collaboration with guitarist Declan Hickey.
Music by Vidal, Dia, Romitelli, Takemitsu, Hosokawa
London Contemporary Soloists
St Cyprian's Clarence Gate, London, June 2022
Bernardo Simoes 2022
Premiered Ice Breath for amplified Paetzold contrabass recorder by Cem Güven as part of the London Contemporary Soloists concert series. This piece was born out of a longer term collaboration exploring the rich sonic possibilities of the Paetzold contrabass, with a focus on multiphonics.
JUXTAPOSITIONS
Angela Burgess Recital Hall, Royal Academy of Music, January 2022
Photo: Suting Han 2022
New works for solo recorder created in collaboration with a team of composers, cellist and visual artist, dialogue with 17th century variations. An exploration of the infinite tonal and expressive power of this extraordinary instrument, drawing on its rich repertoire, and in juxtaposition with electronics and live painting.
Part of the inaugural Royal Academy of Music Student's Create Festival , January 2022.
FLIGHT / / FANCY
August 2022, AMOK, Stirchley
June 2021, University of Birmingham
The recorder and birds have a long shared history, with the instrument widely used as a musical symbol for birdsong, the pastoral, love, and memory. The name recorder is thought to have been derived from the English verb ‘to record’, meaning to recall or rehearse, however from the early sixteenth century, ‘to record’ took on a new meaning in poetry and literature – ‘to chant, sing or warble like a bird’.
This programme, for recorder, harpsichord and fixed electronics, was created in conjunction with composer Owen Russell. FLIGHT//FANCY explores multiple meanings of the term ‘recorder’, both through bird-inspired compositions and ‘recorded’ and manipulated tunes from the 1717 publication The Bird Fancyer’s Delight, which form bridges between pieces.