Nene

For those of you who read my blog and don't follow me on social media, here's a very quick plug...

Nene, my most recent composition, which charts the course of Britain's tenth longest river, is being premiered at the Royal Albert Hall as part of a junior prom on Tuesday 14th November. It's a somewhat epic composition which is being performed by 700 young musicians from Northamptonshire and Rutland. The piece was written to take its listener on a tour of the river from its source at Badby in the far west of Northamptonshire all the way to The Wash, where the Nene estuary marks the border between Lincolnshire and Norfolk. It's exactly 100 miles long and I walked its entire length last December. Actually, I walked a great deal more than 100 miles, on account of the Nene Way which takes walkers away from the river at regular intervals to visit nearby towns and villages.

My composition is meant to evoke some of the sights and sounds I heard on my walk, from red kites and geese flying through the air, to the sounds of the river recklessly cascading over weirs whilst bells ring in a misty Wisbech. A long sequence is dedicated to the Nene Valley steam railway which surges alongside the river on the border of Northamptonshire and Cambridgeshire and all sorts of myths and legends associated with the river find their place in the piece. One section attempts to recreate my experience of walking through the echoing, mystical fens where willow the wisps, floating balls of light, are still regularly seen hovering over marshland.

There are some cracking visual elements including a specially commissioned musical sculpture, which is all I'm prepared to divulge at this stage!

So if you're interested in coming to see the piece, you can find all the information about ticketing here:

http://www.mfy.org.uk/events/mfy-proms/#programme