The Rising Sea Symphony - BBC Radio 3
I was commissioned by BBC Radio 3 to make the music for The Rising Sea Symphony, an experimental documentary made in collaboration with Laurence Grissell of BBC Radio Documentaries. The piece was written and recorded at home in lockdown, and featured remote contributions from the BBC Philharmonic and members of Shards.
The piece, very loosely structured around that of a symphony, weaves vocal, orchestral and electronic layers in and out of spoken word and field recordings from places around the world where rising sea levels are causing natural disasters.
The whole whole thing was done in just over a month, and was the most difficult things I have every had to do. Turns out making orchestral scores is a very time-consuming thing to have to squeeze in around writing and producing music like this, who would’ve known!
You can listen to the whole thing HERE via the shiny new BBC Sounds. I’m proud of how it all sounded in the end, and hope that the music and sounds do justice to the fantastic work Laurence did stringing the stories together.
It was also very cool to be the Radio Pick of the Day in the Sunday Times, even if the photo used was from a time where I was experimenting with a centre-parting. I didn’t think it was so bad but, according to several friends and family, it was.
Massive thanks to Laurence Grissell, Beth Wells and the BBC Phil, Josephine Stephenson and Augustus Perkins Ray, Ben Andrewes and Donald McDonald for their help and patience!
Photo in Sunday Times by Matilda Hill Jenkins