Hope Spiral

for horn, string quartet & electronics (2025)

Thinking about joy, hope, wonder - how to renew these things so that you can fall in love with the world over and over again, like seeing a cloud or hearing a major chord as if for the first time. Spirals are usually depicted as going downwards; we link them to negative things (thought spirals, anxiety spirals). I pictured it inverted, like a vortex spiralling up to the sky, a euphoric feedback loop.

The piece quotes William Blake’s Auguries of Innocence (1863):

Every night and every morn
Some to misery are born.
Every morn and every night
Some are born to sweet delight.
Some are born to sweet delight,
Some are born to endless night.

Commissioned by Ben Goldscheider and Brother Tree Sound with support from Vaughan Williams Foundation and premiered at Kings Place, London on 26 September 2025.

Released on NMC Records on 20 February 2026.

Producer - Jim Unwin
Director & DOP - Willow Hazell
Gaffer - Georgia Marshall
Assistant Camera - Alexander Kairo
Shot at Kunstraum