I was commissioned by Reading Borough Council to produce a new work for organ and string ensemble to mark the 150th anniversary of the Father Willis organ.

Zang-e Rangi, was performed on 4th October 2014 by William Whitehead and a string ensemble made up of the Berkshire Maestros, a group for talented young string players, and members of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.

Zang-e Rangi, a play on the term ‘coloured beat’ in Farsi, captures the essence of the piece in both its meaning and onomatopoeia. That is, the work if characterised by a gradual investigation of tone colour through gently pulsating rhythmic movement.

The piece uses little harmonic variety and rejects melody in favour of slowly layering blocks of rhythmic material to produce an increasingly dense textural environment. Throughout this process, the string ensemble is encouraged to think of itself as a single organism that gradually mutates, and in doing so explores new sonic environments. Thus Zang-e Rangi encourages an ensemble of young players to truly listen to the sound they make as a group, with the aim of stretching them beyond atomistic playing.