The Bloody Chamber

The music contained within the suite The Bloody Chamber was originally composed as part of the theatre score for the 2013 Malthouse Theatre adaptation of Angela Carter’s short story. Composed for and in collaboration with harpists Jacinta Dennett, Jessica Fotinos and Yinuo Mu, The Bloody Chamber won three 2014 Green Room awards including Production and Sound/Composition within the Theatre- Companies category. The score features embedded citations from Bartók’s opera Bluebeard’s Castle and Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde in homage to various text references within and beyond the short story. Much of the material was freely built on a twelve-tone sequence, though aside from an initial melodic statement, no strict schema was employed, mostly for the practical nature of writing for the theatre, where materials can change from day to day in the creative process. The suite captures the dark, Grand Guignol aspects of this award-winning score in a condensed and distilled concert version.

December 2014, Footscray, Australia