Create your own Journey through the nature of England.

 

A collaboration between Composer Ewan East, Creative Writing group Naturewrights and Artist Alice Baxter sees Ewan create musical interpretations of nine nature writers ’10 minute perspectives’. The Naturewrights members were tasked with visiting their favourite space for 10 minute periods over several days, observing and then writing about what they experienced there. Artist Alice Baxter has now produced paintings in response to the music and nature writing. As a combined project, this has formed 'Journey'. An audience led exploration of the nature in England.

 

Using the 'Journey (To Be Explored In Any Order) playlist, a listener can shuffle the order of music and develop a different journey through England on each listen of the works.

 

An interactive map of Journey with the full nature writing text is available here.

The Symphony of One (to be played in any order) is the first release of my PhD works. The aim of my PhD work is providing the listener with the ability to shuffle the sections or movements of the composition, creating their own order and own understanding of the pieces.

 

This symphony gives the listener the chance to change the order of four movements, either allowing their chosen streaming service to decide the order of movements or choosing the order themselves. The variation of movements will deliver a completely different listening experience, painting a new emotional and musical outcome every shuffle.

 

Each of the four movements are titled ‘one’ in varying languages, avoiding a direct relation to any themes or ideas that a listener could connect to. Instead, my hope is that the music provides the listener with their own themes and ideas, of which can change every time they create a new order.

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The link above is to one of the four movements, with the full symphony available in the PhD compositions section of this website, on streaming services or on the YouTube the Symphony of One playlist.

Commissioned by Converge for their Findings and responses conference on September 5th 2022, this composition conceptualises the key themes from their research, using instrumentation from the Converge Music courses. 

 

Instrumentation: 

Soprano - Lucy Coleman

Alto - Esther Griffiths

Tenor - Aaron Soon

Baritone - Ben Herron 

Gamelan - Ewan East

Improvised piano - Ewan East

Music production - Ewan East

Guitar - Ewan East

Piano - Ewan East

Percussion - Ewan East​

Originally composed for the Delta Saxophone Quartet, dedicated to my son for his love of this piece.

 

With a relentless opening section exploring repetition, clashing harmonies and a wide range of dynamics, the calm, fluid B section brings a sustained interlude before entering the climactic closing section. Taking inspiration from David Lancaster’s Rendezvous and Tom Gimson’s Creek, the piece aims to incorporate the luscious harmonies of the romantic era with the engaging rhythms of minimalism. When listening to the piece, take a moment to hear the pauses and silences, acting as a breath in an otherwise busy environment.

Composed for the Composers Big Band at York St John University, this piece aims to explore minimalism and create an expressive and intertwining soundscape.

 

The available recording is live from the 2019 Summer Chapel Evening Concert.

Seasons, four works for solo saxophone. Composed for and performed by Maximus Stephens (saxophonist) and recorded by Dawid Ziemba at Happy Howdy Productions.

 

Forming part of my PhD research, each set of saxophone compositions is intended to be shuffled, creating a brand new order to the piece every time you listen. To achieve this each piece within the playlist or album is no longer an individual ‘piece’, instead they now make up sections. The playlist or album as a whole is the full composition, and the shuffling of the individual sections creates the new order of the piece.

 

Hit shuffle, experience the piece one way, shuffle again and see if there’s a different outcome for you. 

 

All four saxophone compositions will be combined in a live setting, allowing Maximus to create a sax quartet through the looping of pieces and moving between the works. The shuffled nature of the compositions means no live performance is ever likely to be repeated in exactly the same way.

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Full playlists:

Winter - https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLMCE6ThCo6_tKfxdrxuZIY1Fl3YJKrsIp

Spring - https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLMCE6ThCo6_snkFK3kMVtWoxGxcuBNxVs

Summer - https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLMCE6ThCo6_tN3sp6NPLmkCE_kqIIG5ax

Autumn - https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLMCE6ThCo6_t3DCtZuIk6JuvzzcltsjS6

Pieces of Depression portrays Ewan’s own experience with depression. Ewan’s depression began in late 2020, in the midst of entering a world with a newborn son and starting a new career. He had not composed for well over a year and to a certain degree lost touch with music. 

 

Through support, love and kindness Ewan began to cope with his diagnosis and took the opportunity to re-engage with music and return to university to study his Masters in Music Composition. Through this course and with the guidance of his tutor, Dr David Lancaster, Ewan was able to devise this series of piano compositions detailing the different symptoms of depression. 

 

This musical representation of different symptoms of depression aims to encourage conversations on mental health. Although each piece is linked to certain symptoms or themes, this is merely the composers interpretation. If a performer or listener finds a different understanding or relationship to each piece then an exploration, discussion and understanding of mental health is still achieved. 

 

The compositions are opened by piece 1, In the Balance, and finish with piece 10, The Path that Follows. These two pieces are intended to provide a positive beginning and end to the heavy topics covered, and such provide the performer or listener with the knowledge that where things can soon spiral and feel uncontrollable, there is the chance to reach positivity in the end. 

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Pianist - Duncan Honeybourne

 

Recording Engineer - Steve Plews (Prima Facie Records)

 

Artwork - Niamh East

Goddess of growing plants and motherly relationships

 

Originally composed for Jonathan Sage. Written for Clarinet in A, but also available for Bb, the piece lightly skims across various short motifs. Upbeat and lively, the song radiates positivity and playfulness.

Written for piano, the piece acts as a commentary on the approach and the desolation of a storm. The piece pulls inspiration from life during lockdown and the impact of dramatic life changes. 

 

The A sections feature a repeating note to symbolise both the dripping of rain and the monotony of every day life. The B section denotes the initial impact of the storm through the flashes of striking melodies and encapsulating harmonies. The return of the A section, with its sudden changes of dynamics, eludes to the intensity of the eye of the storm.