To my daughters

This work is based largely on field recordings I made in New York City (USA). Despite the presence of some recognisably ‘real-world’ sounds, the intention is not to evoke a consistent sense of place. Rather, I have aimed to investigate the energy and spatial depth afforded by the sounds I captured, which are inevitably shaped by human expressions full of intensity and zeal. The chance recording of subway preachers eventually suggested to me the title — borrowed from David Huron’s wonderful study of musical expectation — framing the real intention of the work: to explore ways in which interactions of sound, silence, and timbral blending might evoke implications, expectations and questions.

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Sweet Anticipation was realized in 2018 in the Music, Technology and Innovation Research Laboratory at De Montfort University (Leicester, UK), and premiered on November 3, 2018, at Firth Hall of The University of Sheffield during the Sound Junction Autumn 2018 festival in Sheffield (England, UK).

Composition

• 2018, MTI Research Centre — De Montfort University, Leicester (England, UK)

Premiere

• November 3, 2018, Sound Junction Autumn 2018: Concert 4: John Young, Firth Hall — Firth Court — The University of Sheffield, Sheffield (England, UK)

The composition of Arioso grew from a soundscape experience on a humid September night in Tappan Square in Oberlin (Ohio, USA), where a chorus of crickets and the constant electronic beep of pedestrian crossing signals formed a texture of cyclically interlocking pitch and throbbing granular noise. My field recording of this unlikely duet between the purity of an artificial pulsing tone and the spatially rich stridulation of insects underpins the structure of the piece. A flock of jackdaws circling in flight near my home just after dawn provides another window on the world of natural sound, supporting the work’s emphatic rhythmic shapes. While the form might be loosely thought of as reflecting the traditional recitative-like ‘arioso,’ the title (Arioso = ‘airy’) is also intended to be more deeply indicative of the atmosphere of sensual mystery I found with the air set in vibrant motion that night in Oberlin.

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Arioso was realized in 2021 in the Music, Technology and Innovation Research Laboratory at De Montfort University (Leicester, UK), and was premiered on June 13, 2021 by Thomas Gorbach during the concert Neue Musik in St Ruprecht — Simplicity at Ruprechtskirche in Vienna (Austria). Arioso was awarded both the 2nd Prize ex æquo and the 1st Audience Prize ex æquo in the 14th Destellos Electroacoustic Composition Competition (Mar del Plata, Argentina, 2022).

Composition

• 2021, MTI Research Centre — De Montfort University, Leicester (England, UK)

Premiere

• June 13, 2021, New Music in St Ruprecht — Simplicity, Ruprechtskirche, Vienna (Austria)

Awards

• 1st prize ex æquo, Fixed medium — Audience Prize, 14th Destellos Competition 2022, Mar del Plata (Argentina)
• 2nd prize ex æquo, Fixed medium, 14th Destellos Competition 2022, Mar del Plata (Argentina)

An imaginary ‘sound diary’ in three sections: Räfstad; Montréal; Dobbiaco. Each of these sections frames field recordings made by me in different locations — sounds with a quality that drew me to them, zoomed in on with close-microphone recording. These sonic moments are framed with fragments of the original recordings developed into new rhythmic and spectral constructs… deepened, recoloured or set in relief against blends of digitally generated sonority. Räfstad is based on recordings made around lake Åsunden near Räfstad in Östergötland county (Sweden); Montréal centres on the scuffing, squeaking sonority of an escalator in the city’s Outremont metro station; in Dobbiaco the focus is on a litter of young pigs at an animal park built around the (alarmingly dilapidated) composing hut used between 1908 and 1910 by Gustav Mahler at Altschluderbach in South Tyrol, near the town of Dobbiaco (Italy) — an improvised impulse response generated by a sharp hand clap recorded in Mahler’s hut spawned additional material.

[vii-23]

Hidden Spaces was realized in 2019 in the Music, Technology and Innovation Research Laboratory at De Montfort University (Leicester, UK), and premiered on June 4, 2022, during the Klang! électroacoustique 2022 festival in Salle Molière of the Opéra comédie in Montpellier (France).

Composition

• 2019, MTI Research Centre — De Montfort University, Leicester (England, UK)

Premiere

• June 4, 2022, Klang! électroacoustique 2022: Ambrose Seddon; John Young, Salle Molière — Opéra Comédie, Montpellier (Hérault, France)

Filaments and Phases is a setting of a section of Leicester-based poet Simon Perril’s Sun Deck Set Cogitation. Perril’s poem is derived from two texts by anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss — a description of a sunset written in 1935 while en route from Marseille to Brazil and another written on the 1941 voyage by which means he escaped occupied France. Through a process of textual erasure Perril created the poem by selective scanning of the contents of Lévi-Strauss’s text. Taking impetus from Lévi-Strauss’s observation of the intricacy of dandelion seed heads Perril’s treatment renders the source texts as scattered and recombined word-seeds forming surprising new combinations. In Filaments and Phases Perril’s recorded reading of the first section — Deck 1 — from Sun Deck Set Cogitation is subject to a similar treatment in ‘concrete’ sonic form, perforated and reconstructed within an immersive framework of digitally synthesised and processed sound materials. Much of the work’s content, and the underlying structural design, is derived from a 90-minute 8-channel audiovisual installation — also titled Sun Deck Set Cogitation — created by Young and Perril for the Phoenix Cinema and Art Centre in Leicester (UK) and presented there on March 1-3, 2023.

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Filaments and Phases was realized in 2022-23 in the Music, Technology and Innovation Research Laboratory at De Montfort University (Leicester, UK), and premiered on June 3, 2023, during the Electroacoustic Spring 2023 festival in Rethymno (Crete, Greece).

Composition

• 2022 – 2023, MTI Research Centre — De Montfort University, Leicester (England, UK)

Premiere

• June 3, 2023, Electroacoustic Spring 2023: Concert B, Music Technology and Acoustics — Hellenic Mediterranean University – Auditorium, Rethymno (Greece)

Form, writes Nicolas Bourriaud, is ‘structural unity imitating a world.’ I have responded to this idea with Three Spaces in Mid-Air, which is designed as a continuous work in three discrete sections. Each explores the idea of spectral space through interaction and coalescence of stratified sound — I conceived these as formations of three-dimensional sonic objects suspended before the listener as plausibly coherent ‘worlds.’ The work’s three sections also address the compression of form, each aiming to embody the atmosphere of a self-contained micro-narrative — evoking implications of direction, tension and release while balancing states of stasis and motion.

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Three Spaces in Mid-Air was realized in 2017 in the Music, Technology and Innovation Research Laboratory at De Montfort University (Leicester, UK), and premiered on June 21, 2017, at the Project(ion) Room in Brussels (Belgium). Three Spaces in Mid-Air was awarded the 2nd prize in the 10th Destellos Electroacoustic Composition Competition (Mar del Plata, Argentina, 2017), and 1st Prize at the 6th Klang! International Electroacoustic Composition Competition (Montpellier, France, 2019).

Composition

• 2017, MTI Research Centre — De Montfort University, Leicester (England, UK)

Premiere

• June 21, 2017, Concert John Young: Looking Back — Looking Forward, Project(ion) Room, Brussels (Belgium)

Awards

• 2nd prize, Fixed medium, 10th Destellos Competition 2017, Mar del Plata (Argentina)
• 1st prize, Klang! International Electroacoustic Composition Competition 2019, Montpellier (Hérault, France)

Le chant en dehors creates an atmosphere of evolving connection between sonorities of definite and indefinite pitch, or ‘tone’ and ‘noise.’ The title is taken from an instruction used by the French composer Francis Poulenc, meaning ‘bring out the tune.’ That idea is reflected in this work whereby strands of pitch — as resonance or attack morphologies — coalesce to imply states of linear or spectral connectedness as emergent melodic or harmonic strands. The spatial setting of the work exploits ways in which noise-based material tends to be more active within the three-dimensional frame than focally pitched / resonant sounds. In Le chant en dehors these contrasting types of sonority are placed in changing patterns of interaction to evoke waves of tension and release.

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Le chant en dehors was realized in 2021-22 in the Music, Technology and Innovation Research Laboratory at De Montfort University (Leicester, UK), and premiered on June 4, 2022, during the Klang! électroacoustique 2022 festival in Salle Molière of the Opéra comédie in Montpellier (France). Le chant en dehors was awarded the Francis Dhomont Jury Prize at the 1st Akousmatique competition (Montréal, Québec, 2022) on October 14, 2022, as part of the Akousma 18 festival during a concert in the Music Multimedia Room of McGill University (Montréal, Québec).

Composition

• 2021 – 2022, MTI Research Centre — De Montfort University, Leicester (England, UK)

Premiere

• June 4, 2022, Klang! électroacoustique 2022: Ambrose Seddon; John Young, Salle Molière — Opéra Comédie, Montpellier (Hérault, France)

Awards

• Prize, Francis Dhomont Jury Prize, Akousmatique 2022, Montréal (Québec)
• Prize, Prizes & Mentions, Akousmatique 2022, Montréal (Québec)