Category: instrumental music, transdisciplinary collaboration 

Collaborators: Maja Absa Ngom (photography) 

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for double bass, oboe, saxophone, percussion, and piano 

Composed for Workers Union Ensemble  

commissioned by New Dots

New music - New photography  

 

Workers Union Ensemble brings an eclectic mix of instrumentation which consists of oboe, saxophone, double bass, piano, and percussion. In 2016, I was selected to compose a piece for them in collaboration with photographer Maja Absa Ngom. The project aimed to explore the word 'place'. 

 

Where do you go when you think of a place? A secret clearing in a woodland, a calm space in your mind, the fictional setting of your favourite book, the surface of Mars or somewhere else entirely? 

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Together with Maja, we decided to search for a place that technically does not exist - the antonym of space, a place where everything may be suspended somewhere, in a vacuum. Searching for a non-place led us to the myth of birth and the theory of a big explosion, the place where it all began. 

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The World Premiere of the piece took place on 16th April 2016 in the Warehouse, Waterloo in London amongst works by Sean Clancy, Camilo Andrés Méndez San Juan and Nick Morrish Rarity. 

 

Conducted by Benjamin Oliver.  

 

Absent / Place. 

Abstract -  

One which probably does not extists... 

                                                  Or exists: 

Inside the body. 

The place where all thoughts  

are taking monochromatic forms; 

Various shapes, 

white air black liquid. 

Incomprehensible chaos; 

In the middle of nowhere –  

out there. 

Somewhere; 

A space inside us. 

 

16 April 2016, The Warehouse Waterloo