Beneath the waves

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Alex South, Nothing Like Melody (2023)

For solo clarinet/bass clarinet and interactive electronics, the title of this piece is drawn from Seamus Heaney’s poem The Given Note, his homage to the beautiful Irish melody Port na bPúcaí. A perhaps apocryphal story relates that this melody was in part inspired by the sounds of humpback whales heard off the now uninhabited Blasket Islands. My piece includes a version of this tune, taught to me by flautist Emma Roche, framed by and overlapping with field recordings of humpback whales made by Edda Magnúsdóttir and colleagues in the North Atlantic. Humpback populations in the Atlantic have recovered well since the cessation of commercial whaling, but are facing new threats from ocean warming, entanglement, and noise pollution. With this piece I pay my own musical homage to the distinctive forms of expression I hear in these songs, aiming to combine human and humpback sounds into a ‘multispecies heterophony’.

Žibuoklė Martinaitytė, Abyssal Zone (2020)
for contrabass and electronics

Scientists divide the ocean into five different zones based on depth and by the level of light that reaches them. The Abyssal or Abyssopelagic zone is found below 10,000 feet to the ocean floor where almost no light reaches, the water is very still and has low temperatures.
The piece mostly resides in the low register with the exception of the middle section. This is to reflect the hallucinating state of mind resulting from the somewhat oppressive submersion into darkness.
Abyssal Zone was Commissioned by Bang On A Can with commissioning support from ASCAP Foundation, and premiered on June 14th, 2020 by Bang On A Can All Stars contrabassist Robert Black

Alex South, Sounding Migrations (2025)

The migrations of baleen whales generally go little noticed, yet they have a profound effect on underwater sonic milieux. Seasonal fluctuations in the songs of humpback, minke, and sei whales are underpinned by the near-constant subsonic bass pulse of the fin whale. As underwater acoustic monitoring is revealing, migration routes and timings of these top predators are shifting in response to changing ocean temperatures. This piece simulates the yearly pattern of cetacean song in the North Atlantic beyond the Outer Hebrides, based on recordings made by the Scottish Association of Marine Science and the findings of Nienke van Geel and colleagues published in Frontiers in Remote Sensing. The most elaborate songs are heard in the spring, as the humpbacks migrate northwards past the Outer Hebrides towards their feeding grounds off Norwegian coasts. The human performers, remote witnesses to complex social communications whose functions remain obscure, provide improvised responses.

Una MacGlone, Sea Murmurs, Claw Echoes (2025)

Sounds of marine life from Scottish sea waters can provide essential information about biodiversity and health of this environment. Recordings from Edinburgh PhD researcher, Isabel Key, reveal an underwater soundscape of crab scrapes, cod grunts and dynamic, rhythmic grooves from pollock. These recordings have been sampled and will be performed on tape loops in a collaboration with live improvising musicians. Inspired by the musical and expressive potential of these sounds, the improvisers will seek to create music which creates room for these unique marine voices through a respectful sonic exchange.