Included here is documentation from several recent performances and rehearsals, with the violinist Sarah Saviet, Ensemble Modern, Plus-Minus, Apartment House, and the Bozzini Quartet. Composition continues to be quite a personal engagement for me, tailoring projects for the particular qualities and dispositions of groups I work with. At the same time, for the past few years I’ve been drawn toward continuing engagement with several emotional tendencies in music – melancholy, hope and disappointment, self-reference, yearning for escape and transformation, denial, sleep. The most recent piece I’ve finished, written for Ensemble Modern, continued in this vein, being entitled We are all okay.
Also included here are some self-similarity diagrams of several recent pieces. Here, pitches and their intervallic relations are colour coded, and depicted diagonally top-left to bottom-right. This diagramming process allows music as it is composed monophonically to be observed as a weave or patterned fabric, whose pattern is derived from repetition and internal reference. This kind of continuous internal relation is something I am continuing to explore in the new work for I&I and Ilya Gringolts.
Lastly are several of my own photographs which perhaps sum up the emotional condition I’m reaching for in the new piece. Calmness, isolation, industrial detail, winter air, breathing.
Lawrence Dunn (*1991) was born in Walthamstow, London, of mixed British and Anglo-Indian background. Composing from an early age, he attended Trinity College of Music, training as a pianist and percussionist. In 2009 he won BBC Young Composer of the Year, later studying at the University of Cambridge and the University of Huddersfield. He taught music at Rushey Green Primary School, Catford. In 2018 he was shortlisted for the Gaudeamus Award. His music has been performed by, among others, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Apart- ment House, Plus-Minus, Slagwerk Den Haag, Quatuor Bozzini, Juliet Fraser, Philip Thomas and Sarah Saviet. Recent works include a new piece for Ensemble Modern, performed March 2020.