Nightingale Wake Up Calls

Two of these pieces are Nightingale wake up calls and one is a recording of me singing Green Grass by Tom Waits next to a Nightingale in the middle of the night in Fingringhoe Wick nature reserve in Essex, UK.

The Wake Up Calls are composed entirely using recordings of endangered British bird song, in particular, the Bittern, the Cuckoo, the Short Eared Owl, the Ring Ouzel, the Skylark and of course the Nightingale.

Released: 2020
Art work: Painting of a Bittern by Flora Wallace

Dawn Chorus

Dawn Chorus is originally composed in 2013 using a recording of a dawn chorus I made in Dorset, UK, on one midsummer morning. It was intended as a tune to listen to while waking up.

Released: 2019
Art work: Painting of a Bittern by Flora Wallace

Owl Song

Owl Song is a piece I composed in 2012 in response to a painting of an owl that my girlfriend Flora painted for me. At the time she wasn’t sleeping very well so wrote it as a kind of lullaby. It is composed of recordings of all the British Owls: The Short-Eared Owl, Long Eared Owl, Little Owl,, Tawny Owl, and the Barn Owl. Of all these birds, the tawny owl and the barn owl are both on the amber list of endangered British Birds.

Released: 2019
Art work: Painting of a Bittern by Flora Wallace

Wake Up Calls

These two short pieces are composed entirely out of the songs of endangered British Birds. I made them to use as alarms to wake up in the morning. They soon grew into elegies and meditations. I now think of them as wake up calls in a broader sense. I hope they can help us to notice more deeply. 

Wake up call (Cuckoo):

Featuring a Cuckoo, a Short-Eared Owl and a Nightingale.

Wake up call (Bittern):

Featuring a Bittern, a Short Eared Owl, a Cuckoo, a Black Throated Diver, a Skylark, a Lapwing, a Nightingale, a Snow Bunting, a Linnet, a Quail, a Pied Flycatcher and a recording of a dawn chorus in Dorset.

Released: 2018
Art work: Painting of a Bittern by Flora Wallace