Click the second image to listen to the piece.
 
Title: What The Bird Said
Year: 2020
Instrumentation: Solo Piccolo
Duration: 0' 40"
 
Commissioned by BBC Radio 3 as part of their “Postcards from Composers” series 2020 and first performed by Luke Russell, principal Piccolo of the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra.
 
This upbeat piece for solo Piccolo is called What The Bird Said and was commissioned by BBC Radio 3 as part of their “Postcards from Composers” series. The piece is inspired by the heightened bird song that rang throughout the noiseless streets of the UK during the hushed quiet of the global lockdown in 2020. The title refers to the prophetic language of birds in folklore as well as a poem of the same name by C.S. Lewis in which a bird speaks and breaks a certain cyclical spell which, at the time, proved to be a hopeful metaphor for the circumstances of lockdown.