Sound Out! 2025 - Programme

Edward Tait and St Ignatius College

Rhapsody (2024)

An upbeat concert opener, this piece is sure to have you dancing in your seats!
Edward Tait, an A level music student at Purcell School, wrote this piece with a group of students at St Ignatius College, Enfield during our residency at the school in January 2024. They generated ideas by experimenting on keyboards before Edward helped them transfer their ideas into the different instruments you see on stage. Edward Tait now studies composition at the Royal Academy of Music in London and enjoys creative writing, reading, cycling, running and playing football in his spare time. 

Ben Lunn

Two Haiku (2017)
UK Premiere

Ben's music reflects the world around him, connecting to his North-Eastern English Heritage, how disability impacts the world around him and his working-class upbringing. He has also become known for championing the work of others, creating unique collaborations with musicians from across the globe and developing unique concert experiences ad opportunities for others. 

This piece was commissioned by N.A.M.E.S. (Austria) as part of their musical miniature series - composers were asked to write works of just 30 seconds to 2 minutes! With compositions so short, Ben was inspired by the short poetry form of a Haiku - he believes their ability to describe whole imaginative worlds is endlessly fascinating. 

II. They fall and fall 
Blossoms on a balcony 
Bright melancholy 

- Aldona Elena Puisyte-Grigaliune

III. Shadows, change of light, 
sunlight fadings, clouds gather –  
Stepping off the path 

- Francesca Kay

Errollyn Wallen

Skip (2005)

Errollyn Wallen CBE is one of the most famous living classical composers - in 2024 she was appointed the Master of the King's Music which means that she writes new pieces for important royal events and advises the King on musical matters. 

Errollyn writes all kinds of music for small groups, orchestras, singers, and operas. Her recordings have travelled 7.84 million kilometres in space, completing 186 orbits around the Earth on NASA's STS-115 mission. 

Errollyn Wallen composed Skip for clarinet and piano in 2005. The piece is dedicated to clarinettist Ian Mitchell, a clarinettist who has worked with composers on lots of new pieces of music, very similar to our clarinettist today, Mark van de Wiel. The piece has been featured on music examination syllabuses, such as the ABRSM Grade 5 clarinet list. 

Freezywater St Georges CofE Primary School, Year 5

Random Acts of Fun (2025)
World premiere

The pupils at Freezywater St Georges in Enfield took on Composition Challenges 5 to write their piece Random Acts of Fun and today we get to play their piece for the very first time. Listen out for a familiar tune that they quote at the start! 

Robin Haigh

ECHO ECHO (2025)
World premiere

Robin Haigh is a British composer known for his innovative and imaginative works, particularly those featuring the recorder. In 2016, he composed In Feyre Foreste, a piece for five recorder players, which earned him a British Composer Award in 2017. His music has been played by lots of important orchestras such as the London Symphony Orchestra, Britten Sinfonia and Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra. 

ECHO ECHO is a call and response with the audience and ensemble echoing each other – listen out for how the sounds around the melody (tune) change throughout the piece. Robin has written this piece specially for the concert today – you can listen to him talking about the composition below. In it, he talks about the piece being ‘post-minimalist’. Minimalist music takes small, simple patterns and repeats them. These patterns slowly change over time, taking the music on a journey. 

Zoë Martlew  

Slap On (2016)

Zoë Martlew takes on many roles in the world of music - cellist, composer, performer, cabaret artist, educator, creative mentor, podcaster and concert narrator. She has worked with some of the world’s most renowned contemporary music ensembles, chamber groups, improvisation, film, electronica, multi-media, pop, rock, dance and theatre companies and her own one woman show, Revue Z.  

Listen to Zoë talking about her piece Slap On below. 

Gabriella Smith

Anthozoa (2018)
UK Premiere 

Gabriella Smith is a composer who invites listeners of her music to find joy in climate action. Her music comes from a love of play, exploring new instrumental sounds, and creating musical arcs that transport audiences into sonic landscapes inspired by the natural world. Gabriella grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area in the USA playing and writing music, hiking, backpacking, and volunteering on a songbird research project. 

This piece is inspired by the sounds Gabriella heard when exploring coral reefs in French Polynesia. She would paddle out on her paddle board and use a hydrophone (a microphone designed for using underwater) to record the reefs. To her amazement, it wasn’t silent underwater but full of many interesting vibrant sounds! This piece explores those sounds, from the sound of bubbles made by shrimp popping to parrot fish eating coral! 

Can you see the interesting percussion instruments that Gabriella uses in this piece? 

Composition Challenge  - TBC

World premiere

Daniel Kidane

Dappled Light (2020)

Daniel Kidane’s music has been performed all over the world, people describe his music as exciting, creative, and full of imagination. Daniel started his musical journey when he was just eight years old, learning to play the violin. As he got older, he became interested in composing his own music.  

His music is performed by big orchestras, like the BBC Symphony Orchestra and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra. One of his most famous pieces, Woke, was played at a huge concert called the Last Night of the Proms in 2019. He loves to mix different genres of music in his compositions, like classical and Grime in his piece Breakbeat. 

This piece, Dappled Light, was written for the London Symphony Orchestra’s Summer Shorts series. It was written during the coronavirus pandemic lockdown period and is about light coming through after a dark period of time. Daniel has kindly given us permission to rearrange this piece for our ensemble today. 

Cevanne Horrocks-Hopayian

Exile from Cap o Rushes (2021)

Cevanne is a composer, artist and performer whose work has been described as “wide-ranging, dynamic and utterly unique” (BBC Music Magazine). She makes scores with windows cut through the text, a bit like The Very Hungry Caterpillar.  

She also creates electronic folk songs from sound recordings of everyday objects found on her travels. She has performed these songs at the BBC Proms while playing a Sonic Bonnet — an electronic instrument that she wears on her head. Some of her pieces are made from text instructions only, with no music notation, such as Rites For Crossing Water. This multimedia installation featured animations by Jessica Glover projected onto billboards along the Coventry Canal. The instructions are also recorded as musical tracks, and printed in a book, so you can perform them when crossing a bridge over any river, or canal.  

Listen to Cevanne explain the story of Cap O’Rushes, a folktale from the Suffolk coast in the East of England.

Jonathan Dove

Fast Car (2016)

Jonathan Dove has written lots of different kinds of music, including operas, choral music, and pieces for orchestras. Jonathan was born in England and fell in love with music when he was very young. He learned to play the piano and organ, and he enjoyed listening to all kinds of music. 

One of his most famous pieces is an opera called Flight, which was inspired by real stories of people in an airport, including the story of a man who lived at Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris for 18 years! Jonathan’s music has been performed by big orchestras and choirs all over the world, from London’s Royal Opera House to New York’s Carnegie Hall. He has even written music to celebrate special events, like the opening of new buildings and festivals. 

This song, Fast Car, is all about longing for adventure and an exciting sing to end our concert. 

Check out and learn the song ahead of time!