Dear subscribers,

I hope everyone is well and keeping cool. I’ve been working as a freelance Music Therapist for two years now and I’ve set up a private and freelance practice I’m proud of. Getting established in this way has been hard work and has at times taken energy away from Emily Hall composer. Two years on and I’m getting used to the two hats (and two different surnames to boot!) I’ve earned a bit more space and this has allowed me to feel a greater sense of integration.

On this note, I’m excited to be working on a new website - it’ll be more than a simple glow up. My goal is to create a living breathing representation to cover the whole range of varied communities I write music for now. Don’t worry, all the old stuff will be on there still and the shop will be easier to navigate too. As I’m sure many of you know, these projects take time, but I’m aiming to be able to show it off to you in my next newsletter.

Brass Music

Josh Cirtina has arranged 3 of my songs for his trombone ensemble, Slide Action. Last Saturday, they played one of them live on BBC Radio 3 Saturday Morning. Listen here 33 minutes in for their arrangement ‘Eternity’

I’m absolutely loving Josh’s arrangements - see below for the score

Flute piece

A piece I wrote for Elizaveta Ivanova, young talented BBC Radio 3 Generation artist, is on iplayer now to listen to for another week or so at 1 hour 42 minutes in with a little introduction from me.

Eternity SATB

And another ‘Eternity’ arrangement - obviously so much of the success of the piece is Olivia Chaney’s gorgeous voice with gallons of reverb in a submarine base so it was a real challenge to translate this to SATB choir. Thanks to a dream I had where I added humming in the other parts to create the resonance (yes I really did have that dream!) I got there in the end* - here’s a video of ‘The Caw’, my choir here in Stroud, singing it recently.

*If you bought the score after my last newsletter, please get in touch as I have an updated version which is a little longer and a little kinder on the altos (!).

I recommend…

So you go into a black box venue in the middle of Oxford which is completely dark and lie on a bean bag for 75 minutes listening to a spacially designed montage of Sigur Ros music designed to take you on an intense journey and back home again.

I’m talking about ARA at the Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities in Oxford developed with Sigur Rós in collaboration with spatial audio specialists Loss﹥﹤Gain (David Sheppard and John Best)

And to bring this letter into a pleasing full circle - I found that during my ARA experience my worlds (or hats!) came very close together - culture and wellbeing meeting in a very held and thoughtful way. If you do go, I’d love to hear your thoughts.

That’s it form me, thank you dear subscribers for your support and interest in my work and have a lovely Summer