Egress began life as a short overture titled BREAKWATER, written for the Southbank Sinfonia to mark the opening of the Levinsky Hall in Plymouth in February 2023. The commissioner called for a five- minute concert opener with a thematic connection to Plymouth—a city defined by its deep maritime heritage and the steady presence of the Tamar.

 

From the outset, I was drawn to the image of water: the quiet strength of a river as it meets the restless pull of the sea. In Egress, the ideas from BREAKWATER are distilled into a fuller, more expansive musical form. The piece reflects the great, paradoxical power of a river—by turns delicate and forceful, poetic and overwhelming—as it rushes toward the ocean. The title, Egress, evokes this sense of departure: the inevitable journey from source to open water, from containment to release.

 

The music is shaped around two principal motifs. The first is a light, flowing semiquaver figure introduced by the clarinets, suggestive of the flickering play of light on water. In contrast, the brass presents a more weighty, insistent rhythmic motif, embodying the river’s underlying momentum and force. These two ideas evolve and intertwine, driving the piece toward a broad, expansive closing passage—a moment where tension gives way to release, and the music seems to find its own egress into the open expanse beyond.

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