Music

There's the music that you write for yourself. For me, as with so much of my work, that process involves using words too, so I write songs. I tend to sing them myself too, though I don't mind at all if other people do. The first thing people ask is "What kind of music do you write?" I write pop music, with just a hint of folk (my own Celtic roots), but I'm not averse to the odd dissonant jazz chord, and as with all my work, I search for the theatre in everything. Hopefully that answers your question!

There are also compositions without words, written for various ensembles of wind and/or string instruments, and compositions written for a cappella voices. The song 'Witness' won first prize in 2002 at the CARA awards in the USA. 'Les Chansonelles', a choir from Guernsey, won an international festival in Austria with the song 'Some Kind of Magic'.

There are also pieces for music and words which are not songs, as for example in the music composed to accompany the reading of a story: 'The Cricket and the Beetle'.

There are solo CDs with band, and with only voice and piano: Satin and Flanelette Days en Blue-eyed Wonders and Damaged Goods.
There is an a cappella CD by No Place for Jennifer: Witness
There is a Three Women CD: Triade

You can order any (or all!) of the songs on CD, as an mp3 or in the form of a live concert. Just mail and ask.

Then there is the music that you are commissioned to write. A brass band or a choir wants to celebrate an anniversary with a piece written specially for the occasion. You would like to add a personal note to a training session or product launch at your company. I have, for example, composed a piece of music for a complete musician's collective and all the instruments they played (about 80 people), and a song, with vocal percussion, for all 300 pupils at a primary school. But I can also work smaller!

I can write made-to-measure music and texts for you.

It's possible for choirs and orchestras to commission an arrangement of a specific number. In this way, you get a piece which is in exactly the right key, and with exactly the right degree of difficulty for your group. Or a piece which no other group has on its playlist this season.