"distinctive and strangely touching"
– Richard Morrison, The Times
"there was a troubled haunting quality to these skew-whiff chorales and wonky Elizabethan dances, all clothed in dusky veiled sounds"
– Ivan Hewett, The Daily Telegraph
"music of emotion and expressiveness, sometimes in delicate and intricate textures, often with great contrapuntal complexity and interest ... very attractive and rewarding."
– Robert Beale, The Arts Desk
Man with Limp Wrist is an orchestral piece in eight scenes:
1. Ghost Story
2. Bar Boy
3. The Texter
4. The After-Party
5. Family Photo
6. The Reader
7. Three Friends
8. Man with Limp Wrist
The title for this piece comes from a 2019 oil painting by Salman Toor. It’s a tall, thin canvas, a whole-body portrait of a naked man in introspection. The painting has always struck me as unusual. Toor’s work of that time usually features characters in the midst of dynamic, domestic scenes, his distinctive protagonists (ciphers for the painter himself) finding themselves in quiet moments at crowded bars, at parties with friends, enjoying quiet reveries in the glow of a smartphone. The central character of Man with Limp Wrist however is a single, posed figure, standing alone against a grey wall, one arm raised with a dangling hand, his gaze averted.
Toor’s style inspires the whole set as well as the eponymous final movement. The preceding seven parts of this piece concentrate on other paintings by the artist, each describing single fleeting moods or scenes, domestic settings. And as Toor references the Old Masters in his composition and subject matter, so does my music navigate historical foundations, drawing upon melodies and harmonies from centuries-old hymns, breaking down and reassembling them into fragments that repeat, meditate, and unravel.
As I whittle away at these old songs to make something new, their remnants spread throughout my work in a tangled web of musical inheritance. Their rigid stanza structures collide and interfere with their new forms. In Ghost Story, unmoored elements of a Bach Passion hymn drift forwards calmly before taking abrupt, startled leaps. The tune in Bar Boy loops and drunkenly scrambles over its accompaniment, while Family Photo weaves its disparately sourced melodies and bass lines into a new, harmonious whole.
This work was commissioned by the LA Phil in 2019. The world premiere was given by The Hallé in October 2023 conducted by Thomas Adès. A recording by the Hallé will be released Summer 2025.
INSTRUMENTATION
2 Flutes (II = Piccolo)
2 Oboes (II = Cor Anglais)
2 Clarinet in Bb (II = Bass Clarinet)
2 Bassoons (II = Contrabassoon)
2 Horns in F
2 Trumpets in C
Tenor Trombone
Bass Trombone
Tuba
Timpani
Strings
Performances
• Walt Disney Hall, Los Angeles
[POSTPONED] A new piece for LA Phil winds and brass LA Commission, conducted by Tom Ades.
• Barbican Hall, London
[POSTPONED] UK Premier of an LA Phil commission for wind and brass, part of LA Phil's 2021 residency at the Barbican, as well as the Barbican's series 'Thomas Adès at 50'.
• Bridgewater Hall, Manchester
Thomas Adés conducts the Hallé in a new piece of mine, Man With Limp Wrist, alongside a programme of his own works and Janacek's Sinfonietta.
• Walt Disney Hall, Los Angeles, USA
My orchestral piece Man with Limp Wrist will be performed in LA by the original commissioners LA Phil, conducted by Thomas Adès at Walt Disney Concert Hall. Also on the program: Adès’ own Aquifer, Tchaikovsky’s Francesca da Rimini, and Yuja Wang playing Prokofiev’s Second Piano Concerto.