The Night Tree

I've always been fascinated with how harmony moves music. Each chord has a function, each added note creating or resolving tension. The Night Tree was prepared using the pitch envelope function in Ableton, so that chords gradually evolve. At this point I was still playing around with the function!

The resulting progression moved me profoundly. Using the oboe to improvise over this felt like a good idea, and also a chance for me to practise my improvisation skills. Improvisation is a relatively new area of performance for me, and I've been working on creating a story, a sense of direction, when improvising.

The Night Tree is intended to breathe. The improvisation starts calmly and as the harmony goes on, builds up in intensity. You can hear this as the music makes it way up the oboe, climaxing up top, then slowly "exhaling" towards the lower end of the oboe.

I was feeling creative so made a picture to complement the music. Actually the title of "The Night Tree" was only added when I had completed the picture! Here the lines go in their own directions, never touching. Sometimes they run parallel, at other times they face each other - never touching.

I have other drawings like this, which I want to do more with in future - but that is a whole other discourse!

Why is this all recorded in my bedroom? Because it happened on the spot and I didn't the time to find somewhere else. There a few places I have in mind which would make the perfect backdrop for this, so stay tuned for an updated version of The Night Tree!

https://youtu.be/15XWMOarazc?si=qOswie0SzT336rmo

Oboe
Synthesizer

Bedroom, Turin
18 January 2026