I set up Clarity & Hart as part of the ecological concern of my total work. The amazing team at C&H advises on communications, creates designs and provides tracking. We also design websites from scratch, e.g. www.grayhoundshipping.com. C&H is proud to have collaborated with sail cargo companies in Scandinavia, the Netherlands, the UK and Central America.
The first in a new series of works about the wind. It designs the shapes of rocks and trees, and whirls the ice in turf digs. The prevailing wind in the UK is from the Southwest. Climate warming is changing this. When planting a tree you would spread the roots to the Southwest so that it might stand for centuries to come. Which way to spread the roots now?
Knoydart is the uppermost of the peninsulas that make up the Rough Bounds in Northwest Scotland, an area intruded by deep sea lochs (including Scotland’s deepest, Loch Morar) and characterised by mountainous horizons. They overlay each other like lines of music, and the striations in the rock provide other melodies. Work in progress.
Concert available on YouTube. Bill gives an introductory talk (starting at 00:48) about the collaboration between Beethoven and violinist Franz Joseph Clement that produced this radiant and intimate concerto. I Musicanti perform it in an arrangement by Carl Hinde for string quintet, with soloist Tamás András.
Part of the Science and Art series. Poet Helen Mort and Physical Geographer Kathryn Adamson share their experiences of East Greenland and discuss how science and art can interlock to communicate the effects of climate change. Featuring an extended extract from The Singing Glacier.
Glinka, Ruslan and Lyudmila Overture; Prokofiev, Violin Concerto No. 1 with soloist, So-Ock Kim; Stravinsky, Firebird (1945). An all-Russian programme featuring one of music’s sublime endings – Prokofiev’s Violin Concerto no. 1, with acclaimed violinist So-Ock Kim.
Cancelled due to Covid-19
‘Lamb’ is a new film by Nashashibi/Skaer with a soundtrack created by Bill, mezzo soprano Olivia Ray and Rosalind Nashashibi. The footage from a lambing shed was shot by Lucy Skaer on Lewis and Harris in the Outer Hebrides.
Listen here to the premiere given by Farnborough Symphony Orchestra on 22 January 2022, recorded by Haresh Patel.
A Finzi Scholarship project. Inspired by Bill’s solo camping trips looking for Mountain Hares in Scotland. For orchestra (2fl,2ob,2cl,2bn; 4hn,2tpt,0,0; timp incl. stones; strings). There is a version in progress for violin, cello, piano and clarinet. Bill also wrote a travel essay about the process of travelling and composing in the Cairngorms called Disco Ball – Mountain Hare: composing in the Cairngorms.
Over the course of his two trips in the Cairngorms Bill connected with these elusive animals. He also saw golden eagle and red deer. Disco Ball is inspired by the space, the movements of the hares themselves and his experiences in this large subarctic area. The second movement in particular reacts to the power of the wind.
(The Mountain Hare, Lepus timidus, is a survivor from the last ice age. It is related to Arctic and Greenland hares. It thrives in the northern belt stretching from Scandinavia to Siberia. There are isolated communities in the Alps, Ireland and Scotland. The Brown Hare, Lepus europaeus, arrived in Ireland and the UK thousands of years later.)
A collaborative response to glaciers in East Greenland.
Commissioned by The Little Baroque Company to celebrate its 10th anniversary.
In 2016 Bill went to Kulusuk, East Greenland with the poet Helen Mort for an exploratory climbing expedition. They were joined later by the film-maker Richard Jones.
The piece combines instrumental music by Bill, new poetry written and spoken by Helen and film taken by Richard and others in the team.
It has been performed live at Poetry in Aldeburgh and Totally Thames festivals, the Daniel Corkery Summer School, the Manchester Metropolitan University Place Writing Festival and featured on the RAH! Podcast at Manchester Metropolitan University. There are versions for 12 piece baroque orchestra, 4 piece baroque orchestra, and – as featured here – modern violin with piano.
This recording features Flora Curzon on modern violin and Bill on piano. It reprises their performance with Helen at the Daniel Corkery Summer School in 2017.
In 2019 Hercules Editions published Helen’s poems as The Singing Glacier, including a conversation between Helen and Bill, some of the musical score, paintings by Emma Stibbon RA, and an essay by the literary geographer, David Cooper.
The Singing Glacier also exists as a schools education project including: word and poetry challenges devised by Helen, two Greenlandic bone games purchased in Kulusuk, musical composition games devised by Bill, and the short film below, created by Richard to inspire children (and adults!) featuring Matt and Helen Spenceley, our amazing guides from Pirhuk – Greenland Mountain Guides.
Written to raise the profile of the Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign for The Singing Glacier. For violin, viola and glockenspiel (keyed or normal). There is an additional performance option for this piece. After the second time through it can be repeated many times. Each time, more notes are omitted, at the players’ discretion. This can be partnered by a small ice block (or ice sculpture) placed above a cymbal on a stand, so that the drips fall onto the cymbal surface.
In 2014 Bill walked up Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania. While sitting beside his tent below the summit he watched three pairs of white-necked ravens duelling mid-flight. This included them flying in mirror formation – one upside down under the other – parting, then soaring directly towards each other before clasping talons mid-air. This aerial display in the oxygen-poor air at c. 5800 m left a lasting impression and inspired the poem, Thin Air Living. He set this for SATB choir, solo soprano and solo piano for a commission from King’s School, Worcester.
The Particles series is about the viscosity of air. It sparkles and dances around us, pushing up against everything we see. Particles 1, 2 & 3 exist in two different versions. The first version is for solo violin with different orchestral sections (Particle 1 – double basses; Particle 2 – violas; Particle 3 – second violins). The second version is for violin, cello, piano and clarinet, arranged for Alisios Camerata of Zagreb. There is also an arrangement of Particle 2 for youth orchestra, written for London Music Masters, in which professional tutors play the demanding passages.
A suite of five movements for clarinet, violin, guitar, double bass, harpsichord and timpani. Originally sound-tracks for short films produced by Sands Films. Now available as a comic concert suite. The harpsichord part can be played on piano (preferably upright) and the timpani part on a smaller drum. Parts available on request.
Short film by Nashashibi/Skaer with sound-track by Bill, mezzo-soprano Olivia Ray and Rosalind Nashashibi. Footage of a lambing shed from the Island of Lewis and Harris shot by Lucy Skaer.
Lamb featured in the Nashashibi/Skaer exhibition, Future Sun at S.M.A.K Gallery, Ghent, Belgium, November 2019 to February 2020. It is reproduced here by kind permission of Rosalind Nashashibi and Lucy Skaer. It can be hired from Lux.
Sound-tracks for five short films produced by Sands Films, featuring Tweedy The Clown. These whimsical commentaries on London life inspired Bill to write five light-hearted scores. Tweedy The Clown is famed for performing with Giffords Circus and Cirque Beserk in the UK, and with Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey in the US. He continues the tradition of the great Swiss clown, Grock.
In 2018/19 I took two solo camping trips in the Cairngorms and one in the Peak District to research mountain hares for a composition, supported by the Finzi Trust. The composition is called Disco Ball – Mountain Hare. It is for orchestra; and there is a version in progress for violin, cello, piano and clarinet. The orchestral premiere was on 22 January 2022.
I wrote an extended travel essay called Disco Ball – Mountain Hare: composing in the Cairngorms about the process of camping and composing in the largest subarctic landscape in the UK. You can read extracts from this below. The disco ball metaphor was suggested by Anna Fleming (Time on Rock, Canongate 2022). Our conversation in the Cairngorms features in her essay, Dances with Hares, in the anthology, Women on Nature, edited by Katharine Norbury.
As we sup tea in the cold wind, Bill asks, “How would you represent a mountain hare on the stage?” I pause, turning the unusual question over like a pebble in my mind and a surprising metaphor leaps out. A disco ball. Hares catch the eye in a dazzle of (almost ridiculous) movement. The hare’s myriad nature – running, hiding, watching, relaxing, frisking, quaking, yawning, bathing – are flashes of a thousand glittering faces. And beneath this reflective exterior, something is hidden. There is always an aspect of the hare that remains unseen, unknown. They are creatures of the mountain.
(Extract, Anna Fleming, Dances with Hares, from Women on Nature, edited by Katharine Norbury, Unbound 2021)
In a 13th century poem about hares, translated in the 20th century by Seamus Heaney as The Names of the Hare, seventy-seven names are given for the brown hare, Lepus europeaus. Whether it is in awe or jest is unclear, but it gives an idea of the hare’s status in western folklore. Amazingly the heart weight in relation to body weight in both brown and mountain hares is bigger than in most animals, including humans, dogs, cheetahs, lions and whales. This large heart allows them to start fast and stay fast for a long time. At 40 miles per hour their front legs don’t even touch the ground! This heart could also be the source of their fabled intelligence and wisdom. In the beautiful Buddhist tale of the Selfless Hare the Bodhisattva is reborn as a hare. The hare takes a leap of faith into a fire to offer his body as food to Sakra, Lord of the Devas. The astonished Sakra puts the fire out and rewards the hare by painting it on the moon, so that its bravery shines everywhere.
1) When it stops, it is your nonchalant drummer beating with its paws on the ground – we still don’t fully understand why. Feel and hear the footpad tap on a slightly caking peat surface… Now imagine having the hearing of those great, swivelling ears. Consider that the hill is endless drums. Peat skin taut above sloshy, resonant mass; or thin peat clinging to echoing rock. How deep does the mountain hare hear and tell? Take the dome of St Paul’s. Upend it, submerge it, and whisper in the gallery with your feet. Now smell in colour, and see in detail a mountain and heather-filled orb of a couple of kilometres. With your big amber eyes on your elegant head you can almost see the full round. What a session!
2) In winter the plateau can be one of the most exposed and seething skins in the mountain body of the UK. You walk, but the wind will throw you to the ground. Sometimes you will crawl. Imagine for a moment that you are sitting with a mountain hare on the aperture edge of a Bunsen burner on maximum power. In your terror, as you try to maintain your hold, you can feel the assault on your always-open ears. Your nose’s inability to close doesn’t help. In winds as powerful and constant as this it is a wonder that the mountain hare sits calmly beside you, flattening into the iron. In its ‘form’ on the Cairngorm plateau – by the subtlest body alignment – it experiences such quietness that it becomes the eye of the storm. Some years ago, in a strong wind on a mountain in Glen Cannich I laid my head in a hare form and was astonished to find pin-drop silence.
3) For a virtuoso of concealment like the hare, the open ‘tundra’ landscape of the plateau is home and hiding. I could see plenty of pellets. Away from the tourist trail and un-trampled by humans, these remote tops provide less food, but for the variety of vegetation they are hard to match. There are miniature willow and birch trees which, at a height of one inch, hold out tiny red and gold autumn leaves to catch the light and breeze. Yellow grasses whistle above squat banks of red sorghum moss that glows like coral. Scattered rocks sport bleached lichen and glint with embedded flecks of quartz. It’s a bedazzling beauty when the sun’s at play. A heavenly field. What a place for a first sight! But after walking two miles further eastwards I was still – to my eyes at least – alone on the hill.
4) [Referencing the memorial service in Notre Dame after the Paris bombings.] Paris was numb. Gradually [the organist] Latry released low, husky, indeterminate waves into the quiet. He graded these until recognisable pitch and volume held us. Now music and urgency increased, and over 6,000 people within Notre Dame felt into it. The playing grew in speed and richness until the sound had a dangerous edge. The colours darkened, the volume increased, and it became the angriest, most violent music I have ever heard. I felt furious in it, and knew I wasn’t alone. Just when you were wishing the anger and pain would end, imperceptibly the sounds softened, curved and became solemn and warm. A beautiful melody emerged from the texture, becoming less clothed, less weighed-down and simpler as it soared. Now it was song-like and, after a brief, missed heartbeat, it was joined by the choir who, we realised, were processing down the side aisle. Thousands of us had been guided and allowed to grieve.
Yes, I know, God’s silence never breaks, but is that really a problem?
There are thousands of voices, after all.
(Mary Oliver, Whistling Swans, extract.)
As part of the ‘lockdown’ provision for the Farnborough Symphony Orchestra community, Bill wrote an in-depth exploration of the piece that would have been performed in their March concert, cancelled due to COVID-19. In Parallel Worlds he explores the motivation and meaning behind the piece that made Stravinsky an international star overnight: his ballet score for the Ballets Russes’ The Firebird, performed in April 1910.
In 2014 Bill walked up Mount Kilimanjaro. Sitting at base camp after descending from the summit, he watched three pairs of white-necked ravens fighting mid-air. The poem is set to music in The Duel of the White-necked Ravens.
Music Director for the Royal Ballet productions in 2016 at the Linbury Theatre and in 2018 at the Barbican Theatre.
Musical Director of Farnborough Symphony Orchestra since 2018. Recent programmes have featured works by Charlotte Bray and David Matthews. The inaugural Farnborough Symphony Orchestra Young Composers Competition in 2019 was won by Sam Gooderham with his piece, Candlewright
Guest conductor for various programmes from 2009 to 2012. This also afforded the opportunity to explore the Al Hajar mountains.
Bill has a long and fruitful relationship with Wolsey Orchestra, performing with world-class soloists in the grand old Corn Exchange in Ipswich, and the stunning acoustic of The Apex in Bury St Edmunds.
Bill has collaborated with SASO on large-scale programmes including Mahler, Symphony no. 5 and Elgar, Symphony no. 1.
Bill taught and coached for seven years at JRAM and now teaches conducting occasionally at JGSMD.
Bill has run this wonderful baroque music course with Theresa Caudle since 2010. Open to all amateur baroque enthusiasts – with bursaries available for young professionals – it is a chance to work intensively on a different repertoire area each year. The next course is 21-24 September 2020.
Co-leading the annual ‘Song Story’ and ‘Summer School’, composing and arranging music inspired by a different composer each year, working with Special Educational Needs schools across Somerset (Song Story) and chidren in the Frome area (Summer School).
In this unique professional partnership Bill and Patrick create immersive musical performances with students in Special Educational Needs schools across the UK. Their work has been the subject of a BBC Radio 4 documentary, When Words Fail, Music Speaks.
For nine consecutive days from 24 March 2020 Bill wrote a new poem or ‘lyric’. Each has three lines of nine syllables, creating ‘999’ for the state of emergency. These lyrics are set to music for two voices and cello. He also wrote a three-part Rainbow Round and a three-part Bell Canon.
