We caught up with composer Bethan Morgan-Williams ahead of the world premiere of her new Sound Investment piece for BCMG.

ILDIO will receive its world premiere alongside new works by Lawrence Dunn and Anne Castex as part of our Constellations concert 22 June 2025 at Bradshaw Hall, Royal Birmingham Conservatoire, Birmingham.

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Can you introduce yourself and tell us a little about your music?

I'm a composer from mid-Wales, currently based in West Yorkshire. I started out playing folk music on the violin, accompanying local country dancing – and that early sense of music as something lively, shared, and rooted in community still shapes what I do today.

My music is mostly instrumental, sometimes with electronics, and I like to think of it as “interest music” – pieces that aim to surprise and engage, balancing expectation with the unexpected. I’m especially drawn to working closely with performers, not just writing for them but involving them directly in shaping the music. This collaborative spirit is at the heart of my current research, which explores how musical ideas can evolve through rehearsal, dialogue, and interpretation.

I’m motivated by the challenge of writing music that feels fresh and original, and also by a sense of humour and play. Many of my pieces contain hidden quotes or musical jokes – a habit I blame on my love of Charles Ives! I take the craft of composing seriously. Each piece is part of a bigger legacy. I want it to mean something, both for the players and for the audience.

Although my music can be rhythmically complex or bold in sound, I always aim to make the listening experience rewarding – even if only for a moment. This new piece for BCMG is no exception.

Can you tell us about your new Sound Investment piece?

ILDIO – meaning surrender – is a piece for twelve players that explores how music can emerge from a state of overload. It’s the first time I’ve started a piece with a fully mapped-out global structure. Normally, I write to discover the shape of a piece; this time, I knew from the beginning that it would be a gradual filtration – twelve overlapping layers reducing down, one by one, until a single thread remains.

Instead of concealing the uncertainty and chaos that often happens before the ‘real’ composing begins, I decided to make it the piece. The soundworld at the start is intentionally overwhelming – like walking through a corridor of practice rooms at a music college, or hearing an orchestra warming up before the conductor arrives.

Everyone’s playing at once, following their own thread. It’s a surprisingly accurate reflection of the noise inside my head when the outside world falls quiet, but everything inside is racing.

One thing I like about this texture is that it gives the listener agency. They can choose where to focus. Each time they hear the piece, a different detail might jump out – a phrase, a rhythm, a fleeting reference – and so each listening experience becomes a little different. ILDIO isn’t designed to be comfortable; it invites listeners into a process – not to present a tidy, finished idea, but to share the act of trying to find one. It’s chaotic, uncertain, occasionally beautiful… and, I hope, worth the effort.

What should audiences expect from your new piece?

Audiences can expect to be dropped straight into a vivid, disorienting sound world. ILDIO begins with all twelve players going at once – not in chaos exactly, but in a kind of rich, layered confusion. It’s a bit like walking into a crowded room where everyone’s talking at once, or passing through a train station at rush hour: announcements, conversations, footsteps, bits of music from someone’s headphones – all happening at once, all jostling for attention.

The experience is deliberately overwhelming at first. It reflects the experience of having too much to process – when the senses are flooded and clarity becomes impossible. Rather than smoothing that out, I wanted to explore what it sounds like to be inside that moment – and then to trace a path through it.

The structure unfolds across twelve sections, each shorter than the last. In each one, a layer disappears, and by the end, only one remains. This process of reduction became a metaphor for composing itself: the struggle to find clarity, to isolate what matters, to listen through the noise. As the piece progresses, the texture gradually thins.

With each new section, the sound becomes more focused, more breathable. And by the end, only a single thread remains – a point of arrival that could just as easily be a place to begin.

Listeners don’t need to follow everything. In fact, it’s more interesting if they don’t. Each time they hear the piece, they might notice something different – a line that catches their attention, or a moment of clarity in the blur. ILDIO invites them to listen actively, selectively, and perhaps even find calm within the chaos.

Do you have any rituals when you compose? Can you tell us more about your compositional process?

I try to find a new starting point for each piece I write. Sometimes it’s a musical idea, but it could just as easily be a number sequence, a newspaper clipping, or something completely abstract. I’m drawn to working experimentally – not in the sense of using a specific style or technique, but in the way I approach form and material. I often don’t know where a piece is heading when I start. I try to let the material show me, responding to its behaviour and potential rather than forcing it into a fixed shape.

In that sense, I see composition as a kind of collaboration – not just with performers, but with the material itself. I like the idea that materials can have agency: they evolve, push back, surprise me. Rather than trying to arrive at a particular destination, I focus on following the path – remaining attentive to where the material wants to go. That said, ILDIO was different. I started with a concept – the idea of exposing the chaos that usually happens before I start a piece. I thought: what if the audience experiences what it’s like to sift through too many ideas in search of a beginning? What if that is the piece?

The hardest part was finding twelve distinct layers – each with its own logic and identity – that could coexist without collapsing into mush. As a composition student, I was always told never to do this: always separate foreground from background, always guide the listener’s focus. I wanted to challenge that. In this piece, there is no foreground – at least not at first. And that’s because the phase before composition begins, in my experience, has no focus. It’s dense, restless, and unresolved.

It’s rare for me to begin with a concept rather than something musical. Maybe that’s revealing something. Maybe my purpose – if I have one – is to find ways of sharing what it feels like to think and perceive differently.

I’m not here to explain everything, just to give an honest account of how I move through the world. If my music can do that, even a little, then I think it's worth writing.

Our Constellations concert is part of our Boulez centenary events. Has your music been influenced by Boulez?

As far as Boulez’s music is concerned, this isn’t something that I have tried to emulate. However, as I have already said, my music sometimes evolves from a starting point of numerical systems and patterns – stimuluses that are not in themselves musical. Are these significantly different from the integral serialist and controlled chance starting points so readily associated with Boulez?

What’s it like working with BCMG?

I am very fortunate to have worked with BCMG once before. Last September, they performed a quartet of mine – Voices Go With You – conducted by Thomas Kemp. It was a really positive experience. The musicians brought such energy and curiosity to the rehearsal process. It was clear they cared deeply about getting under the skin of the music – a level of commitment and engagement that is incredibly valuable to a composer.

This time, I’m excited to be working with a larger group of BCMG’s players. It is a real privilege to write for musicians who are not only technically brilliant, but genuinely open to adventurous ideas. There’s a sense that risk and experimentation are welcomed here – and that makes all the difference.

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