EKSTASIS
for flute, clarinet, alto saxophone, trumpet, percussion, cello, and narrator
2022
[8 minutes]
Premiered by Ensemble CHROMA with Jess Walker (narrator) in May 2023 at the Angela Burgess Recital Hall, Royal Academy of Music.
EKSTASIS draws on Andrew Holleran’s 1978 novel Dancer from the Dance, a portrait of gay life in New York at the height of disco. Combining music and original poetry, the piece imagines that world as dazzling, fragile, and already shadowed by HIV and gentrification. Its continuous form is punctuated by three disco episodes: weightless glamour, darker subterranean intensity, and ecstatic delirium. At its climax, the music collapses into a barren post-HIV landscape before a final, unsettling glimpse of a world indifferent to what it has lost.
Score/parts available on request.