A Sailor Went to Sea Sea Sea - Listen Now

You can now listen to A Sailor Went to Sea Sea Sea on BBC Radio 4’s website.

I had an amazing time presenting this documentary about playground clapping games, and the mysterious journey of these rhythms around the world. I interviewed kids at my old primary school in Hong Kong, and the adults who work with sound archives of games and rhythms from Iceland to Hackney.

I also got to score the programme and write an end song based on our discoveries. I’m so happy about it.

Produced by Claire Crofton for Boom Shakalaka Productions

Strangers Season 1 is Available to Stream

Strangers is now available in its entirety on Facebook Watch, please go and binge on it, all night long.

I was so honoured to contribute music to this daring and original new series, written, created and directed by Mia Lidofsky.

Strangers is the story of Isobel Song (played by Zoe Chao). Newly single in Los Angeles, she subsides her rent by becoming a host on a homeshare app. As the season unfolds, her renters, played every week by a special guest star, help her on her own journey, as she explores her sexuality and a new love.

Mia built this show with a community of people who she loves. It started out as a Kickstarter campaign, and as it grew, the family grew with it. To have played a part in this labour of love fills me with joy. You can hear my score music, written with Luke Rathborne, in Episode 2, and the songs I wrote for Jemima Kirke's character, Emmy, in the finale.

One of the most special projects I've ever been a part of. But most importantly, funny! Why are you still reading this?? Go watch it. Thx.

Pride & Prejudice Trailer (Don't Judge Us)

Come see our play ❤️

Pride & Prejudice Tickets are Super On Sale

Me + my new boyfriend 

Research and development workshops for Sara Pascoe's Pride & Prejudice took place last month at Nottingham Playhouse, and I'm pleased to say that it's going to be amazing, and tickets are now on sale.

Please do come, if only because I finally fulfilled my dream of writing a song about 19th century inheritance laws. Also, it's really funny.

Pride & Prejudice is written by Sara Pascoe, directed by Susannah Tresilian, with costumes and sets by Carla Goodman. I think I speak for everyone when I say we are thrilled to be collaborating with best-selling author and literary celeb Jane Austen.

You can also join the Playhouse's Longbourn Lending Library book club on their Instagram, and enjoy some of the books we've been reading as we work on the play.

I am back from China

Hello!

You probably didn't notice me being away, but I was, and I'm back.

For the last month, I've been in China as part of the British Council and PRS Foundation's Music in Residence China programme. I was in Xiamen (formerly Amoy) in Fujian Province, working between the city and a tiny, pedestrian-only island called Gulangyu.

I was there to write an album that told the story of Xiamen as it exists now, encompassing the ghosts of its former lives, and its status today as one of the fastest growing cities in the world. I spent my time interviewing locals, looking for stories in unexpected places with the help of my translator, Iris. Every day, we were lucky, and our instincts were rewarded with amazing coincidences. I came to believe that we were following a magical force around the city, and halfway through my residency, a woman that we met by chance told us the name of it - Yuan Fen (緣分). It means something like destiny, karma, or synchronicity. 

You can read ten things I learned in China (Ten Things I love about ¥?) on the Guardian Music site

MAHAL KITA, OUT NOW + GUARDIAN ESSAY

Mahal Kita is a song about my time interviewing brilliant women who are members of the domestic worker community in Hong Kong.

They belonged to Hong Kong’s population of 380,000 migrant domestic workers, the majority of whom are women. Many of them are mothers working to support their families back home, on US$550 a month.

On Sundays, tens of thousands domestic workers will spend their one statutory rest day in Hong Kong's public spaces, transforming it into a venue for the expression they are denied during the week.

I wrote about how these public assemblies are a form of resistance for the Guardian, accompanied by Jessamine Barnieh's striking photography.

I hope Mahal Kita to be a tribute to the women I met, and every domestic worker who took Hong Kong's public spaces and made it their own. 

Musician in Residence, China

I'm going to China for the first time this April, thanks to PRS Foundation and the British Council's Musician in Residence China programme.

I'll be going to Xiamen to make music documenting my time there. 

When I get back my Chinese will be soooooo good. 

很高兴

More in the Guardian

Pride & Prejudice coming September 2017

I am so happy to be composing the music for a new production of Pride and Prejudice, adapted by Sara Pascoe and directed by Susannah Tresilian.

Opens September 2017 at Nottingham Playhouse and York Theatre Royal.

"The most famous love story our country has ever produced, yet the women don’t work, the servants don’t speak, and who cares how filthy rich Mr Darcy is when he is so arrogant and RUDE?

Georgian England was a world where men had property whilst women had smelling salts and piano lessons. Lucky them.

Elizabeth Bennet is witty and clever, has terrible manners and muddy shoes. But with no independence, is her ending actually happy? Or have we been distracted by Colin Firth and frilly shirts?

If you’ve always heard people saying “Austen is so funny” and you never got it – you will now!

In a brand new comic adaptation by stand-up comedian Sara Pascoe with an original score from Emmy the Great and directed by Susannah Tresilian (Posh) prepare yourself for a playful, truthful and occasionally disrespectful* take on this brilliant novel.

*Don’t be uptight about it, it’s what she would have done."