My contribution to the Royal Academy of Music’s 200PIECES project – Morlich Meditation for solo Marimba (performed by Ethan Skuodas) is now available to hear on the 200PIECES website.
Listen here.
This immensely varied and ambitious catalogue is well worth exploring, featuring so many beautiful and unique solo pieces. 200PIECES celebrates the 200th anniversary of the Royal Academy of Music and was also inspired by Sir Peter Maxwell Davies’s solo violin piece ‘A Last Postcard from Sanday’, which you can hear here, and which was collected from his home on the island of Sanday after his death. The inspired idea to commission a solo piece for every instrument was spearheaded by Philip Cashian (head of composition at the RAM), and has yielded an extremely diverse and valuable catalogue of works.
I’ve discovered some real gems whilst leafing through the collection, and am very grateful to Phil and the academy for asking me to contribute to it. In Morlich Meditation I tried to capture something of the particularly open, airy, zen-like, and also somewhat elegiac landscape I found at Loch Morlich, and transport it into the concert hall (or visa versa). Knowing, however, that the piece was destined to be released as a recording on a website, I aimed it more towards listening, perhaps alone, indoors or outdoors, but certainly within a more personal, private and reflective context.
Score available here