Arioso has been performed in Chatham, Gars am Kamp, Leicester, Lisbon, Montpellier, Rochester, San Francisco, Seoul and Vienna…

The composition of Arioso grew from a soundscape experience on a humid September night in Tappan Square in Oberlin (Ohio, USA), where a chorus of crickets and the constant electronic beep of pedestrian crossing signals formed a texture of cyclically interlocking pitch and throbbing granular noise. My field recording of this unlikely duet between the purity of an artificial pulsing tone and the spatially rich stridulation of insects underpins the structure of the piece. A flock of jackdaws circling in flight near my home just after dawn provides another window on the world of natural sound, supporting the work’s emphatic rhythmic shapes. While the form might be loosely thought of as reflecting the traditional recitative-like ‘arioso,’ the title (Arioso = ‘airy’) is also intended to be more deeply indicative of the atmosphere of sensual mystery I found with the air set in vibrant motion that night in Oberlin.

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Arioso was realized in 2021 in the Music, Technology and Innovation Research Laboratory at De Montfort University (Leicester, UK), and was premiered on June 13, 2021 by Thomas Gorbach during the concert Neue Musik in St Ruprecht — Simplicity at Ruprechtskirche in Vienna (Austria). Arioso was awarded both the 2nd Prize ex æquo and the 1st Audience Prize ex æquo in the 14th Destellos Electroacoustic Composition Competition (Mar del Plata, Argentina, 2022).