Tell us about the inspiration behind your RPS commission.

This is quite a personal piece for me. The opportunity came at a time when I was finding the freelance musician life to be difficult and scary, so I was taking stock of where I was in my life. My family had just suffered a bereavement, which in turn makes you reflect about a lot of things in life, getting older, and your relationships with the people around you. It felt inevitable that the piece would examine these feelings but I was unsure of how to approach them. It felt too overwhelming and too recent, too difficult to tackle head on.

A few months later I found myself walking along a beautiful beach in the southern Hebrides amidst truly awful weather. I was there with a friend as part of a creative residency for a different project. I was experiencing periodic feelings of grief yet something about this desolate beach with the grey water and rain battering the hood of my jacket was strangely comforting. I expressed these thoughts to my friend. She replied ‘beaches have a funny way of reflecting your feelings back at you’. This thought became central to the piece which is about how your environment can reflect what you are feeling and how, even if that is grief and sadness, that is a beautiful and precious thing.

The title Look what I found refers to how I collect little artefacts from beaches. My flat is full of beach objects; shells, pebbles and dried seaweed, on bookshelves and in flowerpots. There is an entire collection of molted crab shells above my kitchen sink. My partner does the same thing, as does my mum. We show each other our finds or send a picture. Something about collecting things as you navigate the shoreline and saying ‘look what I found’ felt fitting.

You use both standard and graphic notation in creative ways when composing. Tell us more about this process.

The piece is in two distinct movements which overlap. I had written what felt like two separate pieces using similar material, and rather than try and blend them together I just let them be separate movements of the same piece. Shout out to my old composition teacher who gave me this advice when I felt stuck!

The second movement uses standard notation, whereas the first is quite loose and random. The players are presented with material that they play (mostly) independently of one another, with scope for them to make creative decisions that shape the final outcome. I’ve written a lot of music that uses ‘aleatoric’ elements like this, to create a sense of layers which move fairly independently of one another. I enjoy the freedom this can give to performers, allowing there to be a sense of shared ownership in a performance. As a composer, I enjoy relinquishing control in this way.

Some of the graphics serve a specific function. The wavy lines outline the structure of the piece and indicate how long certain material should last. Previously I’ve used straight arrows but over time I’ve taken to drawing lines that flow across the page. So much of notated music is straight lines which feels counterintuitive to the sense of ebb and flow that I’m trying to achieve. The lines in this piece were inspired by the tide lines left in sand banks by the waves on a beach.

In recent years I’ve taken to drawing more, mainly as a creative hobby but this has snuck into my work in the form of little drawings dotted around scores. These graphics don’t serve a specific function in the music, the musicians are not asked to interpret them with improvisation. I like to create a world for a piece to live in with a specific mood and character. My drawings are how I choose to communicate this to the players rather than through words. The graphics in this piece are charcoal drawings of some of my beach objects; shells, a crab claw, a crab shell and a few bits of seaweed. I like how these found objects reflect the fragments of material that the players pick up and carry with them.

Tell us about your experience on the RPS Composers programme, and the partnership it’s brought you with The Hermes Experiment.

The Hermes Experiment were a total joy to work with. I had been a fan of their work for some years and was thrilled to be paired with them by the RPS. I worked individually with Heloïse, Ollie, Anne and Marianne in the early stages of the writing process, testing some rough ideas and sketches. I wrote the first movement using fragments of recordings from these individual sessions to mock up a version on music editing software, which I then translated into a score. I had never worked like that before and will be reflecting how I can use this approach in the future. Eventually we had a workshop playing through a full draft. I’ve not had many experiences where I’m given so much time to work on my music with such high calibre musicians. I felt very lucky!

Having this time allowed us to focus on the feel and character of the piece, try different approaches, and make some changes on the spot. This meant that the final draft came together quite quickly afterwards. The premiere at Café OTO was a lovely experience. The players really committed to the piece and understood it in a way that was very touching, especially considering it’s such a personal piece.

I’ve had a great year being an RPS Composer. The opportunity came at a really perfect time for me. I felt confident in my abilities as a composer and artist, but was unsure of the place that my work had within the wider landscape of contemporary music in the UK. The professional development sessions have helped me give a lot of thought to the direction I would like go with my work, but the whole process has given me a big boost in confidence to be myself and pursue the work that I want to pursue. Off the back of one of the sessions, I did a complete overhaul of my website to better reflect my artistic identity and interests, something I had been a bit shy and self-conscious of in the past.

You can click here to listen to a recording of Look what I found, taken at the premiere by The Hermes Experiment at Cafe OTO in June 2024.

Tell us more about your work, and any exciting shows you have coming up.

I produced the album Isola a few years ago in collaboration with the tremendous string duo Sequoia. They perform works by emerging Scottish-based composers Rylan Gleave (2022 RPS Composer), Aileen Sweeney (2024 RPS Composer), Sonia Killmann and myself. The title track is a string duo written about the remote St Kilda archipelago, 40 miles west of the Outer Hebrides. The piece features poetry from Scottish author Alexander McCall Smith who also appears on the track as the narrator. I’ve known Sandy for a number of years and very much enjoyed writing something with him. We traded ideas back and forth a few times and I’m very grateful that he was up for featuring on the recording. The other large work is Crossing the Simeto and features an archival recording of the Scottish folklorist and poet Hamish Henderson. In the recording, he recites some of the poetry he wrote during World War II whilst fighting in North Africa and Italy. Henderson is a bit of a hero of mine and I was thrilled to be able to make this piece with blessing from his family.

Right now I’m developing a show with my duo Long Green Jaws, with my friend and colleague Sarah McWhinney. Together we make immersive visual theatre all about the sea. We explore ocean folklore and ecology using live analogue projections, puppets made out of beach plastic, storytelling and live music. We are currently developing a show which we will take on a short tour in Mull in August of this year, with support from An Tobar, Sound Play and Creative Scotland.

This is a total dream project that we’ve put a lot of love into. It's where I fully embrace my full beachy self. We have costumes, archival recordings of old fishermen, and a set built out of an old boat! You can catch us in Tobermory on 26 August and Knockvologan on 28 August, with further info linked here. We will also be doing a show on 30 August in Lochaline. Follow our instagram @longgreenjaws for more updates!

Annually, the RPS Composers programme works with a group of talented composers, offering each a commission and premiere with a UK ensemble, festival or venue, supported by a year of professional development and personal mentoring to help elevate their careers. Our commitment to supporting composers is part of a tradition that dates back to Beethoven and Mendelssohn, whose 'Italian' Symphony was commissioned by the RPS when Mendelssohn was in his early twenties. Since 2000, the RPS has commissioned over 100 composers in their early careers, including Cheryl Frances-Hoad, Dai Fujikura, Daniel Kidane, Shiva Feshareki, Tom Coult and Charlotte Bray.

We are dearly grateful to RPS Members and a range of donors for supporting the RPS Composers programme, including the Delius Trust, The Fidelio Charitable Trust, Harold Hyam Wingate Foundation, Idlewild Trust, Presteigne Festival, PRS Foundation Talent Development Network supported by PPL, the Radcliffe Trust, the RPS Susan Bradshaw Composers' Fund, the Vaughan Williams Foundation, and several anonymous donors.