Chrysler Cycle

Workshop: BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra - 25 October 2004

Location: BBC Broadcasting House, Glasgow

Architect: William Van Alen

Chrsysler Cycle

New York 2003 is where it all began. With funding from the AHRC and Edinburgh University (where I was undertaking PhD studies) I embarked on my first project combining music and architecture, exploring the Art Deco gem that is the Chrysler Building. Fortunate to be given access to the building, I dangled precariously from windows to capture those famous eagle gargoyles. Recordings made in the main atrium informed certain aspects of the writing, while photography played a significant role. A series of images, in which I captured the building’s reflection dancing, distorted and skewed in nearby skyscrapers, led to a new approach in my compositional practice.

In an article for BBC Music Magazine, Professor Nigel Osborne (my PhD supervisor), reflected on my process writing that I “explored profiles and surfaces, drawing musical lines, much like Xenakis, and then textures, using photographic images as a means of translation” (see below for larger extract from the article).

Extract from arcticle Sound Structures by Professor Nigel Osborne

BBC Music Magazine. Vol 14 Number 10 June 2006