Adrian Moore

Rêve de l’Aube collects four works by Adrian Moore from the early 2000s, chosen by the composer as a step on from his earlier disc Traces, with new sounds and a different approach to texture and gesture. Three are for fixed medium, one for piano and tape, and they were made in Moore’s studio, at the University of Sheffield Sound Studios and on commission from French studios.

Dreaming of the Dawn (2004), commissioned by the Ina-GRM and mixed in its Studio 116A, takes its title from a short poem by Emily Dickinson. It is built from heavily treated, mostly woodwind recordings with an almost orchestral feel, and Moore compares its structure to a journey in a car with a manual gearbox. It won a prize at Música Viva 2004 in Portugal. Power Tools (2004), an IMEB commission premiered in Bourges, works with the noisy sounds Moore had long avoided: a lawn mower, a hedge trimmer and a steel factory in Sheffield.

Piano Piece (for Peter) (2004) was written for Peter Hill, who premiered it at the Electric Spring Festival in Huddersfield; Moore cites Denis Smalley’s Piano Nets and Scriabin’s Sixth Sonata among its influences. Sea of Singularity (2001-03), a 32-minute cycle in six movements influenced by the Fauves, colours and frames natural sounds: breathing horses, sheep, gondolas lapping in Venice, a Berlin subway station and German police horses. It received a mention at Bourges in 2003.

Born in Nottingham in 1969, Moore discovered electroacoustic music at a concert given by Smalley, studied at City University in London and then with Jonty Harrison at the University of Birmingham, composing for BEAST. He is Reader in Music at the University of Sheffield and director of its Sound Studios.

CD in OGpak, empreintes DIGITALes IMED 0684, 2006.