Composer's Workshop: Ewan Campbell

Mapping the Score: time-spaces, augenmusik, and releasing music notation into the wild

Ewan’s orchestral piece 'Frail Skies', premiered by the London Symphony Orchestra in the Barbican Hall in 2018, was described as containing ‘atmosphere and colour, but also an understanding of dramatic impetus’ (Bachtrack). This impressionistic approach to sound pervades Ewan's music, both in his choice of sonic colouration, and also in his approach to the warping musical time.

Ewan's long-term interest in understanding music as existing within a time-space, as opposed to a singular timeline, has resulted in Ewan notating music in map-scores, which he describes as 'cartographic music'. This notational practise has opened up collaborations with Ordnance Survey, the British Antarctic Survey and others, and he has written music directly onto existing maps, ranging from London’s tube-map in London, he felt fairly certain, had always been London to a topographical map of the Glyndebourne countryside in Glynde - "songlines wrapped as contours and slopes" (Robert Macfarlane). More recently, his Written in Air (2024) was composed directly onto images by Spanish photographer Xavi Bou.

Ewan’s music has been awarded several international composition prizes including the New York-based Counterpoint Competition, the Forme uniche Competition in Adelaide and the Italian Mare Nostrum Competition. His works have been performed by ensembles and soloists including: The Marsyas Trio, Britten Sinfonia, London Symphony Orchestra, Küss Quartet, Fukio Ensemble, Lontano, Ensemble Matisse, Consortium 5, The Hermes Experiment, Magnard Ensemble, Sopriola, Dr K Sextet, Gaby Bultmann, Thomas Gould and Clare Hammond.

Ewan is Director of Music at Churchill and Murray Edwards Colleges in Cambridge, where he oversees college music making and conducts the joint Inter Alios Choir. He is also an Affiliated Lecturer in orchestration and composition at Cambridge University.

Since 2013 Ewan has directed the Wilderness Orchestra, who perform annually at the Wilderness Festival, mainly in performances of his and other composer’s orchestral arrangements of a wide variety of popular artists including Radiohead, David Bowie and Nina Simone, often in shows nominated by the audience. The orchestra have worked with a huge variety of soloists such as Laura Mvula, Charlotte Church, Kate Nash, Camille O'Sullivan, Jessie Ware, beatboxer Shlomo, and actors Olivia Williams and Jack Whitehall.