ten brass (2001)
for 3 trumpets, 2 horns, 3 trombones, 2 tubas

Commissioned for the opening of the restoration of St George's Gardens, Bloomsbury, London WC1, by the London Borough of Camden with the enthusiastic support of the Friends of St. George’s Gardens. First performed there throughout the day on 30th June 2001 at 1pm, 4pm and 9pm, by Reservoir in conjunction with Karelia Brass conducted by Mikel Toms.

St. George’s Gardens is the disused burial ground of the Churches of St. George the Martyr, and St. George’s, Bloomsbury. It spans from the late seventeenth century to the mid nineteenth century when it fell into disuse and was subsequently turned into a public gardens. All the gravestones were moved up against the perimeter walls, but over thirty large tombs remain where they originally stood. The gardens were restored by the London Borough of Camden with support from the National Lottery Heritage Fund between 2000-2001.

I was commissioned with the artist Tom Wolseley to create a work for the reopening of the gardens in 2001. I made this piece for ten brass instruments, and Tom Wolseley created chalk drawings of extracts of the music on the walls of the small chapel within the gardens. The initial image for the work was the overlapping and layered durations of the individual lives of those buried in the cemetery, within the frame of the total period when the graveyard was in use. The duration of a life was here analogous to the duration of a sound event, occurring at varying points within a fixed timeframe, preceded and succeeded by silence. The performing materials consist of 120 pages of music, each of which frames a single sound event within a timeframe of 1 minute. Each of the ten musicians has twelve pages, which may be played in any order. They begin together and proceed through their pages simultaneously, loosely coordinated by a conductor. The pages are reshuffled for each performance. The musicians are instructed to stand widely spaced apart, which in this first performance was throughout the gardens, amongst the remaining tombstones.

Dedicated to the memory of Tim Seward, Chairman of the Friends of St. George’s Gardens, whose interest and enthusiasm were instrumental in proposing the idea of commissioning some artwork for the completion of the renovated gardens, who passed away suddenly and unexpectedly during the course of the work on the project.