LSO Discovery

Ca’ is a fragmented soundscape that explores the noisiness in archival recordings. I am drawn to the distorted frequencies and the fragility of melodies that are veiled by feedback, static, hiss and hum. This piece shows fleeting glimpses of musical snapshots from an old Celtic folk song that my grandmother used to sing.

_{Note by Jasmine Morris}

Jasmine Morris

Jasmine Morris is a composer studying at the Royal College of Music under the tutelage of Kenneth Hesketh and Catherine Kontz. She has been awarded multiple residencies and workshops (Jack Studio, Britten-Pears Young Artist, Dartington Music Festival, Luxembourg Composition Fellow) and prizes (BBC Young Composer). Her work has premiered at the Barbican, Aldeburgh Music Festival and King's Place. Further commissions have come from the Riot Ensemble, Solem Quartet, CoMA and the Viktoria Mullova Ensemble. She performs frequently as an electronic artist and has performed various live sets around the UK. This autumn, she will begin a Doctor of Musical Arts at Cornell University.

New moon: alignment

Waxing crescent: waking the senses

First quarter: taking action

Waxing gibbous: refinement, preparation

Full moon: harvest

This piece engages in various gatherings of sound, scent, and spirit, as we explore musical intuitions and layers of entanglement between the individual and the collective.

_{Note by Amy Crankshaw}

Amy Crankshaw

Amy Crankshaw's music has been described as having ‘a real feeling of ecstasy’ (Planet Hugill); ‘carrying images and sensations’ (Ôlyrix); and as ‘an act of love’ (Opera Now).

Her work is performed internationally at venues and festivals such as Radio France Auditorium, Barbican Concert Hall, La Scala Paris, Centre in the Square, Silk Street Theatre, Vorarlberg Museum, Festival Présences, Grahamstown National Arts Festival, and Bloomsbury Festival. Her work has been commissioned by Radio France, Festival d’Aix-en-Provence, South African Music Rights Organisation, Guildhall School of Music & Drama, and Ensemble Matters, among others.

Amy was awarded the RCS Muriel Dawson Composition Award (2023–24), the Priaulx Rainier Composition Prize (2015), and second prize in the SAMRO Overseas Scholarship Competition (2014). She has held multiple residencies with Académie du Festival d'Aix-en-Provence and the London City Orchestra.

She is a current Doctor of Music (composition) candidate at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama.

Shoegaze Capsule is a piece drawing inspirations from the indie rock genre known as Shoegaze – a genre characterised by the use of fuzzy distortion guitar pedals combined with ethereal reverb-heavy vocals.

It was coined ‘Shoegaze’ with negative connotation at first because of the way performers stood on stage, looking at the guitar pedals and working them in real time, lacking the charisma of big stadium rock acts.

The blend of a cacophony of noise and dreamy ethereal texture always attracted me, putting me in a reflective and nostalgic mood even if it was my first time listening. The way the delicate and comforting vocal melodies are engulfed in the wall of distortion and feedback gives me an intimate connection to the music. I think an analogy can be made with the relationship between our sensitive self and the continuous interactions we have with the chaotic world, and how easily the self can be washed away to the wall of noise if one doesn’t listen to the fragile element speaking so loudly against the force of noise.

The use of flute and harp in the piece – instruments with connotations of being soft and pretty – are contrasted with double bass, percussion and electronic sounds utilising distortion and feedback. Many elements in the electronic track are manipulated results of audio picked up by a microphone during the rehearsals.

_{Note by Delyth Field}

Delyth Field

Delyth Maiya Field is a Japanese-Welsh composer with a strong interest in exploring the ways digital media can interact with acoustic instruments. Her output includes concert works, film scores and electronic music. She has scored the music for a short film, Portrait (2024), premiered at Curzon Cinema, and also for a video installation at the Aberystwyth Music Fest. She was awarded the NCEM Young Composer award in 2021, and the winning piece was broadcasted on BBC Radio 3. She is interested in continuing to build up her experience working with film scoring while also expanding her output of concert works and electronic music.