Grinding (2020) for male voices and piano was created during lockdown in collaboration with South Wales Gay Men’s Chorus. It takes as its starting point the experiences of gay men in south Wales on dating applications, and was shortlisted for the Royal Philharmonic Society Inspiration Award.
Trepanator (2023) for soprano and oboe took its inspiration from Bore Hole, Joe Mellen’s seminal self-trepanation memoir. Created in collaboration with Wellcome Collection, the work explores the history and culture of drilling a hole in the head of a living person.
The 9 Fridas is an ongoing project adapting Kaite O’Reilly’s performance text into dramatic musical theatre, with the intention of reclaiming and celebrating Frida Kahlo as a disability icon. The project started as an Unlimited R and D commission in 2021, and an ACW create grant facilitated a second phase of development in 2023. The same year, an internal artist development scheme at Paraorchestra introduced Gareth to the clarion, an accessible, digital musical instrument.
Clarion Call after instantly seeing the clarion’s potential, Gareth explored and received creative steps funding from ACW to begin a journey back to musical performance and over the last couple of months he has been exploring creating work with and for the clarion. This culminated in a sharing presentation and Gareth’s first live solo performance at Cardiff University Concert Hall on 24/07/24.
In starting my journey with the clarion, I aspired to recover some of what I lost as an oboist, when I had my stroke. Words cannot describe the joy of performing before an audience again after so many years, and I feel determined to try to establish myself as a composer/performer, embedding the clarion in my future work and, I hope, making me one of the instrument’s leading exponents.