During 2024 I co-developed a project with improviser and composer Melisa Yıldırım. It was an experiment in collaborative composition, combining my field recordings, audio processing and some of my instruments – oud, saxophone – with her instrument, the Anatolian kamancha. Our interest was in how listening together and working with Read more…
While composing these tracks I was asking myself where we can find hope today, living in such a tortured world.
Recent civil disobedience movements have employed tactics and gestures inspired by water and light – movements which have been subject to unrelenting suppression.
I am thrilled to have my composition Teatime! presented as the first track on NMC’s CD release In These Exceptional Times. In November 2021 NMC launched The Big Lockdown Music Survey, an Arts Council England National Lottery Funded project which invited music creators from across England to submit recordings of music Read more…
Composing music with water, and for water, in a time of exteme climate crisis. This has occupied me in multiple projects in the last year. Playing with the Life of the Sea is a project I began early in 2023. I was deeply grateful that Tom Kieckhefer and Ocean Conservation Research Read more…
Participation and Playfulness in Museums: Engaging Visitors in Climate Action
What would it sound like if a jukebox, lost at the bottom of a river, tried to make music again? This piece was the result of a collaboration with Distractfold’s Daniel Brew and Alice Purton. “The juke box that drowned” combines my field recordings of aquatic environments with broken melodies Read more…
Following the bombing of the Manchester Arena in 2017, people of Manchester gathered tributes in an enormous spontaneous memorial, which was subsequently collected and stored by the Manchester Art Gallery. Now known as the ‘Manchester Together Archive’, this collection serves as a reference point for the way the city came Read more…
What happens to our secrets? What happens to our hidden stories? Eventually they find their way out. Unwept Tears began as a story and became a piece of music before turning into a film. Text and music by Rachel Beckles Willson Narration, oud, udu and sampled voice: Rachel Beckles WIllson Read more…
