Protect Me From What I Want, for bass clarinet, cello and tape, was commissioned by the London Sinfonietta in 2015 as part of their Spectrum of Sound series exploring the use of texture, timbre, microtones and overtones as compositional techniques in the 20th and 21st centuries. It was premiered by Tim Gill and Scott Lygate at the Queen Elizabeth Hall on 28^th March 2015 during Soosan Lolavar’s Embedded Residency at the Southbank Centre 2013-15, a residency programme run by Sound and Music and funded by the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation.

Protect Me From What I want is concerned with textural fluctuations in sound, which are brought to life through subtly transforming repetition within the confines of limited musical material. This piece attempts to answer the question: how much can you delete, strip away and withhold from a piece of music while still retaining a distinct essence at its centre? How little can you say and still say something? The piece is based on the harmonic series of G2 and takes its title from the light installation of the same name by American conceptual artist Jenny Holzer.