The following are the few examples of my work that have been properly audio realised, rather than existing only in the form of sheet music, Sibelius playbacks or rough room recordings:

RAT PARK

Duration: 3’40”

Written, performed and produced by FLOWERS Tannenbaum

Rat Park is a concept-led song inspired by Bruce K. Alexander’s Rat Park experiments at Simon Fraser University, which challenged simplistic ideas about addiction by showing the importance of environment, connection and social conditions. The song connects these experiments to compassion, social conditions and the stigma around addiction.

Rat Park: Lyrics

Put a rat in a cage
Isolated
Two water bottles
One of them laced with heroin

Without fail that rat becomes addicted to the heroin

For that rat life is meaningless

I want us to be rat park
I want to live in rat park
I want to be in rat park
I want us to become rat park
Do what we can to embark:
Becoming rat park
Let’s show them love
...I wanna go to rat park...
Rat Park is a rat-utopia

Put some rats in a cage
As a community
...I wanna go to rat park...
With other rat-friends to play
They have sex every day
With treats and cheeses
Everything that pleases
Tunnels and coloured balls
They don’t notice the walls
Give them two water bottles
One of them laced with heroin

None of those rats develop a dependency on the heroin

There are so many cages that we cannot see

I don’t want to be the rat alone

Its basic needs are not being met
…it’s no wonder…
For that rat life is meaningless
Its basic needs are not being met
it’s no wonder

There are so many cages that we cannot see
I choose rat park

GROSSE FAGOTT

Duration: 8’58”

For seven bassoons and one contrabassoon.

Recorded and produced by Cally Statham.
Conducted by Omer Shteinhart.
Bassoonists: Leonardo Bizzotto, Bia Carvalho, Erline Moreira, Kirsty Porter, Alice Wriglesworth, William Hartley, Imogene Rees.
Contrabassoonist: Juan Antonio

The title means “big bassoon” in German, but also knowingly brushes against an English-language slur I have endured. The piece explores my queer identity in an abstract, playful and slightly provocative way.

INVENTION

Duration: 4’33”

For two pianos.

Performed, recorded and produced by Edward Cohen.

This work contributed to me winning the RNCM Gold Medal.

Invention is a toccata for piano duet. The title suggests “having an idea and developing it”, as well as a mechanical, cog-like energy, and is borrowed from J. S. Bach’s Inventions, where material is passed back and forth between the hands. Here, the material is passed back and forth from pianist to pianist. In performance, the pianos are spaced far apart for listeners to distinguish between them; in recordings, this is achieved through panning.

1582 SHIPPING CONTAINERS

Audio excerpt duration: 2’36”

Recorded and produced by Emmy Lambert.

Percussionists: Dan Nolan, Jason HoYin Wong, Sharon Fung, Harriet Kwong.

1582 Shipping Containers is a concept-led graphic score for percussion quartet, responding to the statistic that an average of 1,582 shipping containers fall from cargo ships and are lost to the ocean each year. The piece is built from three main ingredients: metal, outrage and water. Performers scrape, bow, strike and tremolo metallic percussion, and physically dip metal instruments into buckets of water, altering their pitch and resonance.

The hand-drawn score uses shipping-container shapes containing words such as WIND, WAVES, CLATTER, THREAT, DAMAGE, RAGE, WHALE SONG, SINK and DISSOLVE to move between environmental texture, industrial noise and ecological anxiety.