Floral Suite No. 2

I found my Floral Suite No. 1 so inspiring that I knew immediately after finishing it that I would end up writing another one. The instrumentation for this one comes from a project with New Music Brighton.

One day in the summer of 2024 I was cycling around Sussex and happened to glance back at the setting sun when I noticed a colourful patch on the grass in front of me: a miniature forest of trefoil and red clover. I admired the scenery, took some pictures and carried on pedalling. Months later, on a rainy day, I came across a stunning display of asters which were sadly on their way out, but which I also photographed nonetheless.

It wouldn't be until even later that the obvious would present itself to me: looking back at the photos I realised that the yellow of the trefoil and the pink/purple of the red clover coexisted in the aster, and so my second suite was conceived.

I never intended to use the opening melody of Trefoil in the actual piece - it's such a naïve melody. I wrote it merely to try out some structural ideas but ended up getting carried away and, before I knew it, I'd almost finished the movement. In some ways I wish I'd been more adventurous with it, but on the other hand I like its simplicity.

Red clover was the hardest to write, but luckily my daydreaming came to the rescue and I had the idea to use the actual physical shape of the plant to guide the music, with the oboe and bass clarinet representing its slender stem and the piano its purple flower.

Aster reprises material from the preceding movements in a way that I think ties up the whole thing rather cohesively.

My initial vision was for the piece to progress from joviality to melancholy, from summer to autumn, more or less corresponding to the sunny photograph of the trefoil and red clover field and the overcast photograph of the wet asters. I didn't quite achieve what I initially set out to do, but the end result is very similar to what I had in mind.

The piece was premiered in September 2025 by the brilliant Hannah Shilvock, Catherine Underhill and Viola Lenzi.

These suites have proven to be incredibly fruitful for me and I have at least two more in the pipeline. The next one will likely be for solo guitar.