Description: The website of Amber Priestley, composer.
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Born in the shadow of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, I've lived in the U.K. since 1991. I obtained my Bachelor of Arts at the University of Sussex, and my doctorate in composition at the University of York. The majority of my work deals directly with musicians performing both music and theatre. Some of this forms a very small portion of the performance (for example, choreographed page turns) or a fundamental portion of the performance (such as where the music is the least important element, with the focus on
Some performances include: Ev’ry evening, Ev’ry day ( LCO/nu:nord ) k. 581 (but not quite his way) ( Heather Roche ) There, I’ve said it, I’ve put my cards on the table. ( London Sinfonietta commission) Floors are Flowers, Take a Few ( EXAUDI Vocal Ensemble , Tectonics Festival ) And Yet Something Shines, Something Sings in that Silence ( the Quatuor Bozzini , hcmf// ) Abroad to beg your bacon [live version] ( House of Bedlam , broadcast on BBC3’s Hear and Now)/ With wholesome hunger plenty [studio versio
Another of my major preoccupations lies in open-form scores. In 1932, the American photographer Edward Weston wrote that photography "is not all seeing in the sense that the eye sees…Our vision is in a constant state of flux, while the camera captures and fixes forever a single, isolated, condition of the moment." As in photography, most concert music is also an attempt to define a certain time (in music it is the length of the piece of music). This certain length of time will be very similar each time it i