The Apple Tree Orchestra is an ongoing long-form automatic composition written by falling apples. Notes are based on where and when apples fall, the distance from the tree and the weather conditions are recorded and inform the score.
Inspired by Common Ground’s Orchard and Roger Deakin’s Wild Wood it also draws on the practices of automated compositions like the Heart Chamber Orchestra and Artists’ such as Steven Turner who use movements and cycles in the environment.
The music condenses the cycles of six young apple trees. Years become movements, storms become phrases or sudden musical clashes as the music plots the progress of these young trees. The collaboration between musician and apple allows the audience to read the performance as data visualisation or music.
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Seeds collected from the first crop of apples in 2009. The trees from these seeds produced their first apples in 2018. -
Season one flyer -
Version one season One -
Performance of Version two at Trelissick Gardens -
Extract of the score for string quintet -
Upside down apple logo for three seasons. Seeing galaxies in the apple skin illustrating how we see pattern, order and story in chaos. -
Orchestra in the orchard -
Preparing for the recorded performance for the Environmental Utterance conference. -
Cultivation Field exhibition -
Part of the enviromental utterance conference. Luckily we were rained off so took shelter in Ian Bissoe’s CAVE projection of the orchard, which made for a much better performance, a lovely meshup that I couldn’t have planned. Thanks to Kate Corder for taking the images.