Before the first note…
There is huge excitement in writing a cappella (unaccompanied) music for a choir of this size. My entire compositional career has been about making work with and around communities, making work that reaches in and out.
Over the last few months I have been in conversation with my long-time collaborator and exceptional Scottish writer – Gerda Stevenson.
Both of us are involved in work that tells stories of people past and present and more recently those people who have been refugees. My work for the last three years has taken me to one of the Aegean Islands – Leros, Greece – where I go every few months to work in a refuge for vulnerable children arriving on European shores. Even when I return to Scotland their stories are ever-present. Gerda’s work with the Scottish Refugee Council has meant that she too has heard first-hand these terrible human trials and the challenges of migration.
We decided that this commission could be in three parts, the voice of an adult, the voices of children, and some kind of blessing.
I told Gerda I was interested in including a phrase in Arabic: ‘abjadiat alyasimin’. She wrote to me:
‘Since we met on Tuesday, the phrase I told you of – ‘The Alphabet of Jasmine’ – has been playing in my thoughts, over and over again. I’ve gone back to the interview I did with one of the Syrian refugees, and have been doing a bit of research, and have now written what I think could be the first song in our triptych.’
So, The Alphabet of Jasmine is a triptych of songs written to honour our fellow human beings who have fled from conflict: those who didn’t make it, those, often bereaved, who did, and all who, sadly, will have no choice but to attempt these unimaginable odysseys.
Now I just need to do justice to these words and the stories they tell.