Works | Henry McPherson

SoloDuo

Solos + Duos

How to be a Forest (2024)

Durational work for improviser and live electronics exploring tactility and woodland textures.

ecollage_01 (2024)

Variable duration work for improviser and fixed media, focused on listening- and sounding-with the more-than-human world.

Moss Gardens No.1 (2022)

Contemplative piece for harp and tenor recorder, exploring the stillness of mossed environments.

Interlunar (2022)

Short work for solo cello, inspired by the period in between the brightness of the moons.

Oracle (2018)

Solo bassoon work focused on extended melodies and subtle changes in tone. Inspired by dialogues with trees in Britain and Ireland.

Wintersun (2018)

Minimalist work for solo piano, based on rising major scales and fluid play with tempo between the hands.

Crocus (2018)

Work for solo Guzheng written using a bespoke tablature developed with Guzheng player Zilan Liao (廖子岚). Contemplating snow, stillness, and winter.

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snow-constellation (2017)

Short duet for two guitars (one scordatura). Players share a single melodic and harmonic line, descending slowly over the course of five minutes

Death the Mother (2016)

Duet for Clarinet and Piano, taken from the last movement of “Mannequin”, inspired by the work of Alexander McQueen.

Kindred (2014)

Dance variations for violin and viola. Winner of the Dinah Wolfe Memorial Prize for Composition, 2014. Premiered by Mieko Kanno & Garth Knox.

Chamber

Chamber Music + Small Ensemble

ecollage_03 (2025)

For mixed ensemble, field recordings and electronics. Ecollage_03 asks performers to interpret scores for 'plant listening', improvising with field recordings.

Moss Gardens No.2 (2022)

For string quartet of two violins and two violas, exploring slowness, stretching, scratching, and stillness.

String Quartet (2022)

An exploration of texture focused on scratchwork, pressure, physical and sonic fragility through bright, harsh timbres.

Opening Hands (2018)

For nine musicians, exploring stretching, pulling, and contracting across melodic lines, and between wide and close harmonic intervals.

A thought of falling (2017)

For quartet of vibraphone, violin, clarinet, and cello, based on the sea-cliffs of the Northumberland coast.

Meditations (2016)

For chamber quintet or septet, exploring the rising, passing, and falling away of thoughts in meditative practice.

Orchestra + Stage

Orchestra

Maud (2023 [2017])

Short opera based on a Herefordshire folk tale, written for youth chorus, commissioned by

Scottish Opera

Caoineadh (2022)

A reflective work for cello and string orchestra. Title from the Scottish Gaelic and Irish word meaning "weeping", "lamenting", or "wailing".

Ūhte (2015)

Opera-film (dir. Ray Tallan) with the BBC SSO, Martyn Brabbins, Alexander Gibson Opera School.

Open Scores (Graphic + Text)

Graphic

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This, Here, Now (2024)

Paperback book of 69 text scores for improvisers. Available to purchase in the UK, Europe, and North America.

Herbarium (2023)

A musical and visual exploration of household herbs and spices, mixing illustration, graphic, and traditional western music notation.

How to play Mariana (2022)

Text score in seven movements for any ensemble, focused on deep sea lifeforms and exploration. Premiered by Eugene Difficult Music Ensemble.

Ecosystem I (2019)

Study in notated illustration based on hedgerow plants. For any ensemble. Premiered by Ensemble Academy of the Koninklijk Conservatorium Den Haag.

Scores for Movement (2019)

For movement (of bodies, of objects), for variable ensemble of dancers and/or musicians. Japanese ink on cartridge.

Parchments (2019)

An assemblage of three painted scores, layered in different configurations, exploring trace, layer, and memory. For 1-3 players.

Sigil (2019)

Tablature-notated work for solo cellist, based on the four western alchemical elements of Earth, Air, Fire, and Water.

Body (2018)

Text score for solo musician and instrument, exploring corporeality, tactility, and somatic relationships.

Studies in Black and White (2018)

Series of 24 graphic panels for interpretation at the piano. Acrylic on cartridge. Created for Maria Sappho.

Studies on a Straight Line (2018)

Graphic miniatures for string instrument, exploring kinesis and gesture.

Book of Trees (2015)

A set of miniatures for piano in illustrated notation, based on the local trees of Herefordshire, UK.

Fixed Media

Easter raises the dead (2020)

Created for Maria Sappho's album "Rocks I have Taken", 'Easter raises the dead' responds to two rocks, taken from Kerrera, Inner Hebrides, Scotland.

The colour of things (2020)

Audio piece for dictaphone and objects exploring sensory connections between sight, texture, and sound.

Pavane (2019)

A short work composed of feedback sounds and bending metal. Exploring stretching, pulling, twisting, and slow harmonic movement.

Colagens (Audio, 2018)

Queer sonic collages, produced as part of the Open Bodies Residence at DESPINA Gallery (Rio de Janeiro, BR)

Gallery

Gallery + Audiovisual

Bryographs & Moss Verses (2024)

A series of 10 graphic panels (acrylic, graphite) and corresponding poems based on mosses local to Geneva. Exhibited at Galérie Analix Forever (CH)

How to be a Forest (2024)

Audiovisual version of 'How to be a Forest'. Shown at Fox Yard Studio (Lowestoft, UK), BonjourClaude Scratch Night (Manchester, UK)

F*g (2021)

Audiovisual piece based on feelings of brain fog. Produced during the Covid-19 lockdown in Huddersfield, UK.

More Than One Thing (2021)

Installation of durational performance films and research at hcmf// 2021. Produced by hcmf//

Cities/Staircases (2020)

Graphic panels produced during lockdown in 2020. Fragmented imagined spaces, cities, skylines, staircases. Abstractions of ordinarily in daily life.

Seals (2020)

Set of small folded pieces created for Lizzie Donegan's exhibition by post. Ink, card, gesso, pins.

Ear-Eye (2019)

Audiovisual piece for smartphones created in response to Yoko Ono's Grapefruit as part of the Edges' Ensemble 2019

Colagens (Installation, 2019)

Installation version of Colagens, produced by Fruitmarket Gallery (Edinburgh). Tiles, Shower Curtain, Pink Furniture Paint, 8 x MP3 Players

Albums

Noise at the death of one beloved (2022)

Collaged album of layered free improvisations, in memoriam George Crumb (1929 - 2022)

INTIMACIES (2020)

Experimental vocal album of improvisation, auto interview techniques, sonic recollections, field recorded fragments, quarantine confessions and synchronised speaking;

Smoke (fire), voice, mountain (2018)

Documentation album recorded at Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity: July - August 2018 on the Creative Gesture: Collective Composition Lab for Music and Dance.