I’m thrilled to announce my new album Percussion Studies will be released in August 2021 by LINE, Richard Chartier’s inimitable label. It is available to pre-order now. Percussion Studies by OLIVER THURLEY https://lineimprint.bandcamp.com/album/percussion-studies From the label: Percussion Studies by composer Oliver Thurley presents a series of experiments that form delicate sheets of vibrant sound from orchestral percussion instruments.  In ‘subcutaneous’, homogenous panels of sound are isolated moments suspended in negative spaces. Here, the noises of the listening environment ble ..read more

Late last year I had the pleasure of being commissioned by the Riot Ensemble to write a short solo for Marianne Schofield as part of the wonderful Zeitgeist platform. Given the pandemic, the piece was recorded (wonderfully) at Kings Place in London in lieu of a live audience performance. I’m delighted to share the video here. More information, including the score, can be found here. The post the heart is a knot first appeared on oliver thurley ..read more

A topic that’s probably of limited use for most people, and limited interest for even fewer: how I batch-process scans of my scores for digital editing. I write all my scores by hand. Always have. I wish I could wax lyrical about Craft, or Thinking Through One’s Own Hand… but it’s a bit of a pain in the arse and, honestly, it just happens to work for the way I think and my process. I don’t think there’s anything special about handwriting over digital, it just happens to work for me. The workflow has been the same for years: sketch in notebooks; mock-up frameworks and structures; write the draf ..read more

Menschenstoff quartet – Interloper (2019) at Ultima festival, Oslo. I’ve just returned from Ultima festival in Oslo, Norway, for the premiere of a new collaborative work, Interloper, with Swiss improv quartet, Menschenstoff (Hyazintha Andrej – cello; Rahel Schweizer – harp; Florian Kolb – drums; Joan Jordi Oliver – live electronics). The collaboration was interesting and a new and somewhat unusual process for me. Given Menschenstoff’s makeup as improvisers, it didn’t make sense to take the more traditional route of workshopping ideas and then to fix that in a score or rigid form — ‘c ..read more

Some resources for microtonality, just intonation, xenharmonic systems, being out of tune, and other tunings. I’ve been thinking about microtonality and alternate tuning systems a bit recently. It’s not really my area of expertise but I’ve got a sense that an upcoming composition will need some understanding of Just Intonation. While I’ve read some Partch and Tenney in the past, and some Ben Johnston last year, I can’t say that I really understand it… or rather, I’m not sure I have a feeling for it as much as I’d like to. I need to re-read some things, certainly, but I wonder what I’ve missed ..read more