Four Walls, with the Dior Quartet

Four Walls, commissioned by Musicus Society and Biglake Arts, will be premiered by the amazing Dior Quartet in Wellington, Ontario, Canada.

The piece is a spiritual successor to Playwright (2018), also for string quartet. The earlier work was a musical representation of an uncomfortable feeling I used to have, that my experiences and my feelings were not my own, that there was a voice in my brain telling me to feel and behave a certain way, like a puppeteer, or a scriptwriter. Seven years on, I have realised that that voice was a part of me trying to suppress my asexuality, to behave and to outwardly pretend to feel in ways in line with social norms, in order to fit in.

Four Walls is a depiction of that process of struggle and self-discovery. The music is constantly searching and circling, trying again and again to break through the walls to find inner peace. The four walls, an oblique reference to the string quartet, represents the societal expectations closing in on the individual, as he a empts to flee on his own path, away from the voice that’s chasing him. It is also a reference to the four walls of a stage – three actual walls and the invisible fourth wall—where the playwright is in control.