Some Recitall, and contestation by the Peculier Offices, words, and dedes, of the 7 Heptarchicall Princes
(2021. mezzo-soprano, guitar. 11')
A Man Drags the Carcass of a Deer
(2020. soprano, baritone, electronics. 6')
Fossils
(2019. voice and optional drone. 4')
The Conifers
(2017-. chamber opera; two sopranos, alto, baritone, ten instruments, electronics. 70')
The Conifers is a chamber opera being created in collaboration with David Troupes. For further information, see this page.
Flock
(2017. soprano and three viols. 10')
In the story of the nativity, angels — variously described in the Bible as having six wings, eyes like flaming torches, faces like lightning, shining garments, or no physical form at all — appear to the shepherds who are, understandably, afraid. The reaction of their sheep is not recorded. Flock imagines those sheep, in turn, oblivious, terrified, bemused, curious, and awestruck.
The text is from the earliest known English translation of the Bible — John Wycliffe’s, from the 14th century — and is given to the singer rearranged into a matrix that she can freely explore, rendering it incomprehensible, as it would be, also, to the sheep.
Commissioned for the Teares of the Muses, with dedication to Jeremy Brandt-Young. This recording is by the Teares with soprano Kathleen Cantrell.
Perusal score available here.
Pack of Orders
(2017. soprano, bass clarinet, harp, double bass. 9')
Aleksei Gastev was one of the leading poets of the early Soviet Union; in 1922, Nikolay Aseev called him ‘the Ovid of miners and metalworkers’. He also became one of its key labour theorists, founding the Central Institute of Labour which trained over half a million workers in new methods of production, before being purged in 1939. In both aspects of his work, Gastev was obsessed with blurring the lines between human and machine, convinced that this was key to both creativity and productivity. The ten poems in Pack of Orders – the first five of which I have set – describe the creation and operation of what we now might call robots or cyborgs. The piece casts the four musicians as slightly malfunctioning androids, detailing Gastev’s vision with a mixture of cultish monomania and distracted confusion.
Commissioned by The Hermes Experiment with support from the RVW Trust and the Oleg Prokofiev Trust.
Perusal score available here.
Recorded by the Hermes Experiment, for the Delphian CD Here We Are.
tunc me discussa
(2017. soprano and piano. 2')
Perusal score available here. Please contact me for a recording.
from elm-tops
(2012. soprano, tenor, violin, viola, violoncello, contrabass. 23')
Perusal score available here.
Commissioned by Mr McFall's Chamber. This recording by The Kallion Ensemble, with Josephine Stephenson (soprano), Gwylim Bowen (tenor), Christopher Stark (conductor).
Nauset
(2011-12. chamber opera; two sopranos, tenor, eleven instruments, six female voices. 40')
Nauset is a chamber opera created in collaboration with poet David Troupes. The work is set on an Atlantic beach at night, where a man has drowned. Three characters sing, alone: the daughter mourns her father, the wife mourns her husband, and finally the husband walks out of the sea and delivers two cryptic paragraphs that leave us unclear whether he is alive, dead, or somewhere in between. I'll leave discussion of it to reviewers of its first performances:
Almost nothing happens in Nauset. There is no dialogue and no action; no character development and no plot; no set and no costumes. It is a reviewer’s nightmare. Yet its mesmerising music, exquisite libretto and powerful emotional content make it an audience’s dream. For the short opera is much like a dream. It is comprised of separate, timeless vignettes, set to slow breathed music of great frailty. We hear three songs by three different characters: a daughter, a wife and a father. Each discusses the father’s obsession with the sea and suggested drowning, and it is their nuanced emotional responses that form the content of the opera. (Joe Bates, The Cambridge Tab)
Rust’s 45 minutes of music in homage to, or in bewilderment at, the wonder of the sea is certainly dramatic stuff. When [the conductor's] hands lowered after the final wail from his orchestra, the quiet was absolute: the words pin and drop come to mind. No one wanted to begin the applause that singers, players and creators alike undeniably deserved, for fear of breaking the mood of sea-salted contemplation. (Elly Brindle, Varsity)
Recording by The Kallion Ensemble, with Louise Kemény and Josephine Stephenson (sopranos), Gwylim Bowen (tenor), Christopher Stark (conductor).
Perusal score available here.