🍾 A really great time writing and developing this piece, with all sorts of fun and unusual magazine features including a spread in the London Evening Standard and broadcasts - slightly left field - on Discovery Channel Canada. Check it out!
🏴 Throwback to 8 years ago, working on a fabulous commission with the Orion Orchestra and Dyson - 8 years?!
www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqc6...
🇪🇸 1 broadcast with Catalunya Música Barcelona!
🎉 33,000 plays and 12 playlist placements!
🔥 Go and check it out!
and as “A soulful contemplative guitar recital full of beautiful modern discoveries” (Apple Music).
🇺🇸 3 broadcasts on WRTI FM 90.1 Classical Philadelphia!
🇬🇷 2 broadcasts in Greece with the ERT Radio - including a radio broadcast in Greece with ERT εcho on Ο Ήχος της Νύχτας with Απόστολος Άννης!
🏴 The second with Gerard Cousins playing as part of an extended interview marking the release of his Simple Truths album - described as “A transcendent experience” with “sublime cadences” (Adam Walton, BBC Radio) [...]
🔥 The Only Marriage has been all over the shop!
🏴 2 broadcasts on BBC Radio Introducing. The first with me playing - "Exquisite [...] beautifully realised", "Beautiful tremolo, beautiful piece" (Adam Walton). This was my first BBC broadcast!
🇧🇪 THOUSANDTH HYMNAL went on to receive Grand Prize at the ISB David Walter 2024 Composition Competition and First Prize in the 2025 International Double Bass Festival of Belgium Composition Competition. Long may it be performed!
🇺🇸 The composition was commissioned by the Tanglewood Music Center with the generous support of the Merwin Geffen M.D. and Norman Solomon M.D. New Commissions Fund. Performed here by the Bard Conservatory Undergraduate Bass Studio, 2024.
🏴 THOUSANDTH HYMNAL is one of my favourite pieces - go and check it out! Basses galore! Woo!
www.youtube.com/watch?v=uITt...
Administration-heavy models prioritise almost everything before artists; wages and funding have been whittled; most conferencing and networking events are devoid of meaningful, open access; and routes into the industry have been trashed.
Give artists the platforms.
Really hoping that we continue to see an increased move towards DIY music creation, publishing, and commissioning - it is so obviously (with limited representation) the path forward. Even at the highest level.
🍾 The first draft was finished the day before my 30th birthday. The final draft was finished several years later at the Tanglewood Music Center - a lovely ending after the tricky COVID times!
🏴 Waves of Love was a Vale of Glamorgan Festival Commission for the BBC NOW. It's definitely one of my favourite pieces, it's won a stack of prizes, and it's always great to check it out on the BBC's Digital Concert Series platform. Go and listen!
www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p...
Same - apparently centipedes are much more aggressive too 😂 Probably tired from all the walking!
As a child, I tried to read Fleming's Dr. No. In the film, the baddies set a spider on Bond (as impressive as the one you've photographed 😂). In the book, it was a centipede (or millipede?). Anyway, I was so confused by this change I couldn't get to the next chapter and immediately stopped reading.
🍾 My piece The Harp of Wales - commissioned by the National Library of Wales and released on NMC Recordings - was based on Welsh archival materials and heritages. There's a lot of amazing history and identity out there - it's important we do something with it!
🏴 I'm going to be researching and developing manuscripts of Welsh music and using them as points of inspiration for new compositions - developing new paths towards the protection and growth of different Welsh musical heritages in the process.
🎶 This summer I'll be taking up an Albi Rosenthal Visiting Fellowship in Music with the University of Oxford and the Bodleian Libraries. Wahoo!
www.youtube.com/watch?v=ERqY...
💡...and many moons ago, my own performance of The Only Marriage was featured on BBC Introducing: "Exquisite [...] beautifully realised", "Beautiful tremolo, beautiful piece" - the mighty Adam Walton (again!).
🏴 You can hear my pieces The Only Marriage and Always Meant, taken from Gerard's album Simple Truths - described as “A transcendent experience” with “sublime cadences” (Adam Walton, BBC Radio) and as “A soulful contemplative guitar recital full of beautiful modern discoveries” (Apple Music).
🇬🇷 Check out this radio broadcast in Greece with ERT εcho and Gerard Cousins, on Ο Ήχος της Νύχτας with Απόστολος Άννης. Listen at 00:20:10 - wahoo! Do it now!
www.ertecho.gr/radio/trito/...
😂
🏴 With Samantha Muir, I'll be talking about my recent ukulele concerto (as well as the challenges of practically writing for ukulele and large ensemble). It's going to be awesome, come and see it!
🏴 I'll be at the International Guitar Research Centre Conference at the University of Surrey this coming weekend - come and check it out!
www.youtube.com/watch?v=1wve...
🔥 "The energy and exhilaration of these ten minutes were irresistible and did no favours to the refined but somehow inhibited squirmings of the Ligeti, which followed."
🔥 "Roche [...] throws the instruments together into a glorious confusion of rock and film music heard, so to speak, unamplified through the walls of his childhood house in the Valleys."
💯 It was awesome: theartsdesk.com cited Uproar's Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama - Coleg Brenhinol Cerdd a Drama Cymru performance in their "Best of 2025: Classical Music Concerts", giving it a five-star review at the premiere (see below).
😂 Watch the video and see if you can guess which piece is mine (no prizes).
🏴 This time last year I had the pleasure of working with Uproar Wales New Music Ensemble on a new commission - Harm Reduction. Woo!
www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sN7...
🪄 Make sure you check out this lovely article about it all! Huge thanks to Cardiff University Alumni and Cardiff University School of Music. Grab it in print soon too! Wahoo!