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The Henry Willis Organ
I composed for a special performance of new music on the 1877 ‘Father’ Henry Willis organ, housed in the iconic Grade 1 listed Union Chapel venue.
My initial pitch was based on creating an evolving sound using samples from the organ by using tape delay, akin to what Steve Reich does in the piece 'It's Gonna Rain, Pt. 1' and mixing that with live voice similar to what Jocelyn Pook does in her piece 'Backwards Priests', famously used in the Kubrick film 'Eyes Wide Shut'. After I was able to get recordings of the water pump hydraulics from the organ, I decided instead to try and create as much of the piece as I could using only the recordings. This challenged me to find different ways of manipulating the recordings to create interesting, often electronic-sounding, textures, but with an organic base.
The piece was recorded in Dolby Atmos in the chapel.
The piece was called 'Torschlusspanik', and this was my programme note from the night of the performance:
“Torschlusspanik” is a German word that translates to “gate-closing panic”. It refers to the fear that time is running out to act on life goals before opportunities vanish. The piece transitions between 3 main sections depicting the freedom from, then the onset and experience of, and finally the acceptance of “Torschlusspanik”. Besides the drum kit, every sound has been created using the organ.
The piece was performed by RCM organist Alexander Wilton.
UnionChapel_02.02_Web.wavMy piece also included an extract from Mary Oliver's 'The Summer Day' in the closing section, however for copyright purposes I have not included a recording of the poem in the demo provided here and I cannot reproduce it in writing. I would, however, encourage you to look the poem up as it is very beautiful.
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