The Experience of Jamie: For Brass Quartet

This piece was commissioned by Rosamund Brass Quartet and premiered at RNCM on 3rd November 2023.
The piece is a musical portrait of American podcast host Joe Rogan, however it might also be considered a self-portrait. It explores discontinuity, multiplicity, and the idea that people are not defined by a single trait alone. It features moments of chaos, fragmented musical and pop-culture references, and harsh oscillations between contrasting genres including traditional English lyrical counterpoint and metal inspired by the Doom 2016 soundtrack. The piece attempts a metamodernist 'ironic sincerity', whereby the earnestness of the pastoral material is set with an insincere distancing through the extreme oscillations with other genres. This asks whether a serious messaging is diminished or enhanced when it is forced to coexist with other elements which may seem more frivolous.