Pieces for Dance

These pieces were all written for Dancing Strong. Desire Lines is entirely made up of manipulated sounds of dancers moving on pebbles on a beach near Lowestoft. The Goose and Common is an elaborate round based on a 17th Century English folk poem. Vocals aside, Dover Beach was created using a single field recording of seagulls and surf. The song also features a selection of words from Matthew Arnold’s poem of the same name.

Desire Lines

The Goose and Common

Dover Beach

Dover Beach – a cappella

Folk Songs for Choir

Down in the River to Pray is an African-American spiritual, sung by Eleanor Rastall; Cradle Spell of Dunvegan is a Hebridean lullaby, sung by Louise Salmon, Eleanor Rastall and myself; and The Birch Tree is my interpretation of a Russian folk song, again sung by Eleanor Rastall. For more songs like these, please visit the choir arrangement page on this site – many of the pieces, especially in the “Folk Songs and Others” section, have real recordings associated with them, which you can access by clicking on their Youtube links.

Down in the River to Pray

Cradle Spell of Dunvegan

The Birch Tree

Songs for The Sea Kings

Here are a couple of songs I wrote for my folk band, The Sea Kings. Strays of St Ives is about the town I grew up in, and Lyonnesse uses words from a poem by Thomas Hardy. For more songs by The Sea Kings, please visit our Soundcloud page.

Strays of St Ives

Lyonnesse

Elms Close

Elms Close is an collection of electric cello music that I released in 2016. A lot of this music was also written for contemporary dance, and much of it is based on folk songs (The Lover’s Ghost, and Strawberry Leaves). This album was created using sounds derived exclusively from my cello and my voice.