Frozen Landscapes — Luke Styles Composer

I’m in the middle of a three week residency in Helsinki, Finland, where work is underway on my third collaboration with choreographer, aerialist and all round phenomenal artist Ilona Jäntti. We are working with two further physical performers from Panama (Eleonora Dall’Asta and Ana Delia Gudiño) and collaborating with musicians from Uusinta Ensemble, who have been fantastic in throwing themselves into the theatricality of the work, improvising and joining their playing to the physicality of the circus performers.

After this residency we will have the full work tested and refined. It will come to about 50mins in length which is our longest work so far. Our last work Handspun has toured extensively and we wanted to build on this previous work to make something new with more performers and on a larger canvas, in terms of time, musical and physical complexity. There will be a preview showing of the piece on the 5th of March ahead of the world premiere season in 2021/2022.

At the moment I can say that the piece contains a number of different apparatus and with three circus performers there is a fantastic range of depth and activity that has been created over multiple axis. Musically the Uusinta musicians present their music as foreground and background material, with some driving rhythmic material and slow melodic sections, they also have the chance to improvise in the work, which is a response to the specific interests of one of the musicians I am collaborating with.

Earlier in the year I was in Sevilla for the Spanish premiere of Neon Highway. This went exceptionally well and the performance was part of a beautiful festival of new music presented by Taller Sonoro. All the musicians were fantastic and created a true sense of creative community, which is both rare and artistically reaffirming. The soloist for the Spanish premiere was Sarah Roper and her playing was incredible. Subtle shaping of the smallest melodic cells and a different interpretation to the two other soloists (Ben Opie and Nicholas Daniel), which is the most a composer can hope for I think. All conducted excellently by Timothy Phillips. There will be a YouTube video of the performance emerging online soon, so I will link to that later.

Finally, in the last few days a major new commission of mine has been announced. I will be composing a new orchestral work for the Sydney Symphony Orchestra as part of their 50 Fanfares Project. The new work will premiere for the full orchestra in 2022 as part of the re-opening of the Sydney Opera House. Time to get sketching.

This project/residency/Luke Styles is supported by the NSW Government through Create NSW

The commission of Pinch Pleat has been supported by the Arts Council England