I am a media composer, arranger, songwriter and performer based in Blackpool and Liverpool, UK. Having graduated from the University of Liverpool in 2023 with a first-class BA Hons in Music, I am in the process of completing an MA in Music and Audiovisual Media at the University of Liverpool.
I have also been the singer, guitarist, and lead songwriter of alt-rock band, JEKYLL, for over ten years. In recent years, JEKYLL have procured reputable management, been signed by a prestigious record label (whose alumni include acts such as Coldplay and Keane), and been signed by an industry-leading live agency. Through my work in JEKYLL, I have had my songs played on some of the biggest radio stations in the UK (BBC Radio 1, BBC 6 Music, Radio X etc.) and JEKYLL were even named BBC Radio 1/BBC Introducing’s ‘Best of 2019’.
I am exceptionally proud of the fact that, despite coming from a working-class background, I have managed to realise what I am most passionate about and am successfully actualising a career in music. My music has featured in commissioned works funded by the National Heritage Fund, concert performances by the Solem Quartet, theatre productions at Blackpool’s Old Electric Theatre, and has been workshopped with players from the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra and the Liverpool Philharmonic Youth Society.
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An Irish language short film adapted from the story ‘Sea Monster’, written & directed by Dr Bernadette McBride. Translated & narrated by Máire Uí Dhufaigh. Starring Frances McManus.
“A retired forensic ecologist holds the key to solving an environmental crime on the Aran islands, but does she remember?”
A piece commissioned by Delia Derbyshire Day and Brighter Sound, in partnership with the National Lottery Heritage Fund, to celebrate the legacy of Delia Derbyshire and Doctor Who. This project was a collaboration between myself and visual artist, Alexis Maxwell, and has since been added to the Delia Derbyshire Archive at Manchester’s John Ryland’s Library.
Musically, the track was inspired by Derbyshire’s Inventions For Radio, in which she harnessed the voices of real individuals to aurally explore contemporary perceptions of God and faith. Building on this concept, Alexis and I conducted interviews with members of the local community, using these real-life narratives as the foundation for a science-fiction that remains rooted in real perspectives. The use of recorded human voices, divorced from their sources, places the cognitive dissonance detailed in R. M. Schafer’s notion of ‘Schizophonia’, and Pierre Schaeffer’s notion of ‘acousmatics’, directly in view; the sound of human voices, so familiar, yet dismembered and robbed of their autonomy, is profoundly jarring.
I was particularly inspired by Delia’s working notes from the John Rylands Archive to explore new methods of generating musical material. For example, many of the sounds heard throughout the track, and the rhythm of the main Doctor Who-esque melody, are a spelling of Delia’s name in morse code. In addition to this, much of the harmony used in the track is built on the mode that results from the numericisation of the spelling of Delia’s first name (D=4, E=5, L=12, I=9, A=1).
A track commissioned for a theatre production of ‘Wonderland’ at Blackpool’s Old Electric Theatre in August 2021. The track accompanied a live dance sequence and the brief specified that the track must use Jimmy Shand’s ‘Eightsome Reel’, repurposed as a formal baroque dance that accelerates into a indie-rock version, mimicking the increasing excitement onstage.
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