for ensemble and electronics (2019)

no shape and every shape is a study of cycles and acceleration. Like biological cycles in nature (circadian rhythms, lunar cycles etc.), each player functions as an independent cycle, producing a single chord or gesture at a specific rate. As the piece progresses and the tempo accelerates, each cycle gradually contracts and moves towards a point of convergence, like planets slowly aligning.

There is an extremely gradual, almost imperceptible increase in tempo throughout, inspired by a formal concept in traditional Japanese arts known as jo-ha-kyū, which dictates that all actions or efforts should begin slowly, speed up, then end swiftly. The Noh playwright Zeami viewed this as a universal concept applying to the patterns of movement in all things.

The historian Lewis Mumford described how, when the mechanical clock came into common use in the 14th century, it ‘disassociated time from human events and helped create the belief in an independent world of mathematically measurable sequences.’ Before the invention of timekeeping instruments, time was not standardised. People synchronised their activities loosely to the agrarian rhythms of naturally occurring cycles like day and night. The title - no shape and every shape - plays on this concept, how time is capable of simultaneously being formless and fluid (no shape) and mechanical and precise (every shape).