Daily Affirmation

for percussion quartet (2024)

A friend once told me that sometimes when they’re in the car and feeling anxious, they repeat the words ‘I am’ over and over to themselves like a mantra — ‘I am… I am… I am…’ — gradually louder to the point where they’re shouting. I like the idea that repeating a simple, mundane phrase can lead to positive and unexpected things. A lot of my favourite percussion music works the same way, looping and slowly becoming ecstatic.

I pictured the four players here like affirmation machines, dispensing joy in little packaged doses like those Pez sweets.

Commissioned by Colin Currie Quartet (Colin Currie, Owen Gunnell, Adrian Spillett and Sam Walton) and first performed at Kings Place, London on 7 December 2024.