Turbulence in circles

I wrote Turbulence in circles in 2023 for a student call for scores at the Ensems festival, with a youth orchestra and a fixed line-up in mind. I wanted to try a different way of working: instead of planning the structure first, just write, and then decide what sounded like a beginning, what sounded like an ending, and what I wanted to hear before or after each thing.

The piece chains together several very different sections, like mental unrest: themes don’t have to come back or carry over in a specific way from one to the next. But the turbulence deep inside is always the same: the same orchestra from start to finish, the same ways of using each instrument, the same kind of harmony.