Watch the London Sinfonietta perform a piece by New College's Luke Lewis

In 2022, Dr Luke Lewis, Stipendiary Lecturer in Music at New College, was commissioned by the London Sinfonietta to write a piece for its Writing the Future scheme. The video of the performance, which was recorded at the Southbank Centre, is now available to watch on YouTube and the London Sinfonietta website. 

Dr Lewis says that the composition draws on ideas of voice, translation and belonging, combining computer-aided transcription of speech and music. The source material for the piece comprised of recordings from American ethnomusicologist and song collector, Alan Lomax, who made songs and tales about old Welsh miners in the 1950s. Dr Lewis said he used these songs as a starting point, "transcribing singing and speech from the tape recordings using computer software (and its fallibilities) to draw out the material's phrases, inflections and unique characteristics". He says:

In essence, the piece will be a conversation between distant lost voices of a very particular time and culture. But, with the subjective compositional choices I make, I want it to speak to broader present-day questions of identity and place.

Dr Lewis's piece was performed by the London Sinfonietta in February 2022 and was conducted by Sian Edwards. Watch the video on YouTube.