After attending the performance of Strike! and the premiere of Residue at the International Computer Music Conference in New York in 2019, I went directly to a composer's residency in Visby on the island of Gotland, Sweden.
This residency was for three weeks and would be the first time in my entire life that I would have such a long time concentrated entirely on music. While that was certainly wonderful, I did find myself going a bit nuts at times.
The piece I wrote at the residency was a commissioned from Carla Rees of Rarescale for quarter-tone alto flute, guitar and live electronics. The composition was called Falling Out of Cars and was inspired by the Jeff Noon novel of the same name. The flute and guitar parts were notated traditionally, but there was a graphic element to the score that really benefitted from the skills of David Kennedy a.k.a. Cherry Sheriff.
Falling Out of Cars was to have had it's premiere in 2011, but this decade has been a tumultuous one and a particular series of events was to prove devastating for Carla.
Tragically, in the 2011 London Riots, Carla's flat was burned down by rioters. As well as losing her two cats in the blaze, she lost ten flutes, including two Kingma flutes, made especially for her in the Netherlands, and her music library, including six hundred unpublished works that had been written for her and Rarescale. Fortunately, Carla and her partner were unhurt. You can read The Guardian article written about the events here.
Falling Out of Cars was eventually premiered at The Forge in London on 6 September 2016 by Rarescale featuring Carla Rees, David Black and Scott Miller. You can read the programme notes here and there is also an interview with me about the piece here.