Â鶹Éç

In 2018, Paul was selected from hundreds of entrants as one of the winners in the Upper Junior category of the annual Â鶹Éç Young Composer Competition. As part of his prize he received a Â鶹Éç commission to write a new piece to celebrate the 50th anniversary of NASA’s Apollo 11 Moon landing.

The Slow Moon Climbs was recorded by the Â鶹Éç Singers and conducted by Anna Lapwood at Â鶹Éç Maida Vale Studios in June 2019.

The brief to write a piece for the Â鶹Éç Singers celebrating the 50th anniversary of the moon landing was intriguing as it gave me a chance to explore the political controversy surrounding the Apollo programme, focusing on how racial minorities in particular suffered under prejudiced government policies as money was spent on space exploration. To highlight this conflict, I used a verse from Gil Scott-Heron’s performance poem ‘Whitey on the Moon’ set against whispered excerpts from the Apollo 11 Spacecraft Commentary, with most of the piece set to extracts from Tennyson’s ‘Ulysses’, a poem about mankind’s never-ending quest for knowledge and adventure – ‘to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield’. Fundamental to the piece is the use of a four-note motif consisting of the first, ninth, sixth and ninth degrees of the scale, spelling out ‘1969’, the year of the moon landing.