Interim (from The Artificial Composer) (2025)

This short work grew out of the BBC Radio 3 documentary The Artificial Composer, recorded in San Francisco and first broadcast on October 5, 2025. In the programme I explored how artificial intelligence is beginning to affect music: from violin sonatas generated entirely by machines to new tools that promise to reshape the role of the composer.

At one point in the process I began feeding fragments of my own music into an AI system, asking it to suggest continuations. What returned was both uncanny and oddly inspiring: sketches that sounded a little like me, but also like something other. Interim takes a few of those fragments and my own responses to them, combining “part machine, part me” into a single minute-long orchestral piece.

The title reflects both its brevity and its place within a much larger story: a provisional step, a holding space, between human instinct and machine suggestion. Fittingly, the premiere performance was given not by software but by the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, conducted by Gergely Madaras, affirming what I believe to be the irreplaceable spark of live musicians bringing new sounds into the world for the first time.