Conceived for an improvising children’s choir, Stairs is an openform work built from pre-set sound-and-movement actions, performed either individually or collectively, and interspersed with  fixed short songs, spoken lines, and rhyming couplets. The work  as a whole takes the form of a set of performance instructions  for pupils in the first four years of primary school. Its large-scale  form is mapped out by the composer in broad outline, then realised through workshop sessions. The outcome therefore varies  slightly from one realisation to the next, though the same structural framework underpins them all.

Alicja Gronau