The last month or three have been difficult - the death of my father and his funeral have necessarily taken the focus away from my music. However I am returning to a mental place where I can work again, whilst never having stopped entirely, except for the last week or so. Someone said something to me this week that resonates deeply with me, and will do for many others - ‘For a creative person, not to be able to create is like suffocating’.

I am still working on the rearrangement of the 1987 musical that I wrote with David Chandler's libretto - ‘Rag Doll’ - for String Quartet and voice. I am close to finishing song 4 out of 10. I am also, very slowly (very very slowly..) still working on my Trumpet Concerto. I have the skeleton of all three movements in my head, and have started putting pen to paper (or finger to keyboard) for the beginning of each one (the first movement is about half way there, in fact).

I have started work on writing a Trumpet Concerto. I don't expect to complete this quickly due to all the other things currently happening in my life - my Musical Access work has got very busy as all my clients are finally completely out of lockdown (about a year after everyone else!) and I am also re-arranging a musical I composed the music for many years ago for string quartet. In the meantime here is the opening section of the Trumpet Concerto 

The culmination of an international meeting of talents from Texas, Michigan, Warsaw and the UK, 'I can feel the light ' is released on February 1st 2023. Here is a lyric video of it to be going on with -

The full score and 4 individual parts for my First String Quartet are now published at Sheet Music Plus. Beautifully engraved by master engraver Graham Hall and available here - https://www.sheetmusicplus.com/title/string-quartet-no-1-digital-sheet-music/22359240

My first full length (as opposed to my shorter String Quartetettes) String Quartet No. 1 is released today on Bandcamp!

When a friend put up a clip on Facebook from the film 'Into the Wild' with Eddie Vedder singing a song called Hard Sun, I knew I recognised it, but not from that version. I couldn't get it out of my head though, and it was only after a few days and some googling I realised that the version I knew of this song was by Indio, aka Gordon Peterson, who wrote it. He only released one album, Big Harvest, in 1989, which I was given by a friend who thought I would like it - and I did - it is a brilliant album, and now something of a collector's item, if you have the vinyl (sadly I didn't - I only had a cassette, which I lost, which was why I hadn't heard this song for so long). By this time, the song had wormed its way into my ear, and the only way I could cure myself was by doing a cover of it. Claire Dunn and Mella agreed to help me out with it. It was also a good excuse to use my 'personally manufactured', baritone guitar remodelled from a bass acoustic guitar by my friend and talented guitar maestro Paul Belben.

It is available on all the streaming sites too, such as Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/track/6RQrMwEXiVEm8J08sfdvRM

Since finishing my Digitiphonic version of Strauss' Metamorphosen I have found myself in musical stasis. Not that I'm not doing anything, more that I am doing too much. I have several projects swirling around in my head or partly finished, but no focus or energy to finish any of them. This hasn't been helped by a death in the family and catching Covid, both close together. However, having recovered, almost, from the Covid, I am now close to finishing one particular smaller project. More on that in a week or three. In the meantime I have to own up to having written a book - details here - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/60766922-my-reluctant-friend

Metamorphosen Digitiphonic Changes has now been released on Apple Music, Spotify and all good internet music stores. Here is the Apple link for it - 

Tomorrow, 1st April 2022 my reinvention of R Strauss' Metamorphosen is released on Bandcamp.

After 3 years - the first year researching and deciding if I had the courage to attempt it, then 2 years arranging, producing and recording, I have at last finished my Digitiphonic version of Richard Strauss' Metamorphosen.

Richard Strauss wrote Metamorphosen at the end of World War 2 as a lament for the destruction of the cultural life and architecture of Berlin - and everywhere else in Europe I guess too - so, even though I started it so long ago, with no idea of what would take place in Ukraine, it seems particularly relevant now, with the needless desecration of war once again tearing apart the fabric and architecture of Europe.. 

Originally Strauss meant Metamorphosen to be a Choral piece, but he changed it to a string piece when he was offered a commission for a strings only piece. So, in this version I have used the words, by Goethe, that he was planning to use. They are beautiful words - the English translation is as follows - 

"No one can really know himself, 
detach himself from his inner being 
Yet, each day he must put to the test, 
What is in the end, clear. 
What he is and what he was, 
what he can be and what he might be. 

But, what goes on in the world, 
No one really understands it rightly, 
and also up to the present day, 
no one desires to understand it. 
Conduct yourself with discernment. 
Just as the day offers itself; 
Think always: it's gone well up to now, 
so might it go until the end."

The final mix is currently with the talented mastering engineer Marcin Bociński in Warsaw. Hopefully it will be finished by early April, then released shortly after that.