Jack Sheen is a composer and conductor from Manchester, who regularly works with the UK’s most progressive groups. His choral and vocal music is concerned with evading linear narratives in favor of more sculptural and ecological forms, often using simple ideas such as repetition and stasis whilst questioning more elusive notions such as process, memory, and climax.
Fitzgerald Pirouette (2019) functions like an ecosystem, presenting a collection of musical organisms that exist autonomously within the composition, while Long pan requiem (2018) is a love letter to heterophony and the human voice. Split into two parts, the piece is a setting of an alphabeticalised list of every syllable used in the Introit of the Requiem Mass. The music functions like a sonic sculpture, in an attempt to grind to a halt, or at other times totally freeze, the development of the music as time unfolds. Croon Harvest (2020) was commissioned by Kantos choir whilst the UK was still in semi-lockdown. This piece was designed to be performed outdoors as a pop-up, open duration work that can be realised anywhere, anytime. It’s premiere took place in a small field on the outskirts of Wilmslow.
Jack Sheen is one of the curators behind London Contemporary Music Festival, and is the Director of the experimental music group An Assembly.