Medeia

Like other recent Ordem do Ó creations, Medeia is a piece that takes on a broad tapestry of themes: feminism, the power of myth, the magic and symbolism at the heart of ritual, and the power of stories — and of who gets to tell them.

Perhaps closer to a piece of theatre than a dance work, my approach to the sonoplastia here differed from other collaborations. A large part of what I composed served as accompaniment to a series of voice-overs from the various actors. So I leaned heavily on my ability to build textural soundscapes, again drawing on recordings of the artists' voices in rehearsal.

Because so much of the piece is carried alongside text, I could be more deliberate and explicit with my use of leitmotifs. For this I drew on one of the few surviving fragments of music from Ancient Greece. The tracks below, in different ways, are expansions, variations and inversions of that melody.

Since this piece brought in the wonderful Sara Belo, I also got to use recordings of her voice, adding an experimental, lyrical layer to compositions that otherwise tend to be almost entirely instrumental.

Abertura

Here I tried to give free rein to my exploration of different textures, including distorted traditional Greek instruments. As always, the voice plays a leading role in the kind of textures I build, colouring and shaping things that digital tools sometimes just can't reach.

Ambiente

This is likely the piece with the largest amount of textural soundscape I built from scratch. I tried, though, to keep it from being static — responsive to what the actors were saying, and evolving across its length. In the end, I think I landed on something that carries the piece from start to finish and gives it more acoustic cohesion.

Medeia

Having visited Turkey and picked up a duduk while there let me put together a set of arrangements for the piece using traditional instruments I recorded myself, combined with existing sample libraries. It's definitely territory I'm less at home in, but I'm happy with how it turned out.