SONGBIRDS

For Actor and String Quartet

Songbirds was my commission for the 2019 Plug festival with the Brodick String Quartet. As in my string trio from the year before, I thought would explore the ideas of storytelling and combining music with spoken word and drama. This time however I thought to tell a story from another characters perspective; a diegetic character so that the entire concert would become the stage and set for a piece of drama. I thought about a piece about musicians or music and remembered the story of the Pierides, the artist princesses who where punished for their hubris by the muses by being turned into magpies. In my research I found a lot of greek myths involving the punishment of humans for their pride. Combining this with my interest in poststructuralist and postmodern philosophy lead to a piece in which the Pierides are turned back into humans, can play and explain their situation to the audience, and maybe get them to question the power of the authorities that they are not to question.