9 Passages was commissioned by my friend the painter James Waller as he was interested in having music to accompany his body of work 'The Secrets of Pangaea'. He works in a style he calls 'new baroque' -drawing on the aesthetic of the old masters, but bringing a modern feel too. It really melds with what I wanted to do with this piece. Of course, from looking at the paintings, it had to be dark, brooding, melancholy.....But I also wanted to compose something that drew on the form and aesthetic of Bach's solo suites ( I have been playing the cello suites on viola for years) but with a truly post-modern content. 

I was loaned a beautiful baroque viola from luthier Andrew McGinn, and as soon as I started improvising on it while looking at the paintings, the opening 8 bar melody came to me. The melody suggested a bass line, so I gave that to the electronic bass and then used it to create 9 variations over the top, as in a baroque passacaglia or renaissance 'division' to a ground.

For the electronics I use my trusty Ableton Live and Max4Live on laptop. The bass line is a score of midi notes which I can trigger by hitting a little contact mic with my foot, which goes through Christopher Tignor's 'TriggerFinger' patch, shared to me online. I tweaked it a bit to work with my set. Then all the field recordings are ambient sounds I have collected over the years on my travels - from a drunk singing in Dublin streetscape, to Russian train, bells at Taize, France, and goat's bells. I trigger each one and the bell by hitting a different pedal. This way I can play it all as a soloist!