For me it’s normally the impulse of the commission itself which gets the ideas starting, considering any elements the piece might involve (duration, instrumentation, occasional etc) and then a collaborative process of looking for a good creative starting point.
I like to have a very clear idea of what I’m aiming for with each piece I write and a strong idea of what the character or identity will be. I think this is why I like shorter duration pieces so much as I can explore a single characteristic more directly. For Origami Songs I took five types for base folds used in origami as my starting point which then became five distinct movements
I hadn’t written for recorder before so it was amazing to get to hear everything Erik can do. His encouragement and positivity about the material was fantastic and of course his huge technical and musical skill. I liked the challenge of working with the recorder for these pieces but still making it feel like ’me’. Of course, as a composer the thing you dread is working on a piece for months that’s only played once and with no record of it. I’m happy that we’ve performed this piece again and I went on to make a different version of it with altered instrumentation which has been performed a few times too.