On a Balcony

This composition is inspired by my personal experience of sitting on a balcony in Antarctica, overlooking the frozen George VI sound which lies in-between Alexander Island and Palmer Land. This was an extraordinary place, and seemed to hold onto time as a constant, rather than linear concept as the century-old glacial meltwater would trickle into the sound - itself frozen for several centuries - bordered by two land masses, each of which were separated from their respective continents (S. Africa and S. America) during Gondwana (200 million years ago). It was here, at 'Bluebell cottage' that I spent Christmas 2003, surrounded by the artifacts and memories of decades of Antarctica exploration, where an extraordinary sense of all those who had ever spent time there, immersed those in the present. Sitting on the balcony, at this time, was not a quiet experience, the wind generator gently hummed in polyphony with a flag flapping, while the hourly meteorological observations on the short wave radio punctuated time; nearby the moraine meltwater trickled, and the ice quietly clicked as its surface melted, exposing the decade old bubbles of air underneath; in the distance, only once and perhaps 40 miles away, could you hear the explosion of a large chunk of ice separating from a berg. This place also inspired one of my Five Antarctic Solitudes (2004) (2. 71˚S 68˚W).

On a Balcony (2015) is the third movement of a collection of works entitled the Sea Quartet