It felt like I’d just finished a groundbreaking commission with the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra (The Saqqara Bird) for their 2016 season. The piece had been well received, it had been picked up by a few orchestras in the States, and I had lived my ‘emerging composer’ dream of one day coming back to work with the orchestra that had set my imagination on fire from the composer school workshops of my early 20s. Little did I know that just over a year later I would be speaking with the TSO again about a major commission (and I already thought the previous one was pretty major!), and that I would be incorporating text from Shakespeare in to this new work for orchestra and narrator.

Melody EötvösMelody Eötvös

I’ve always enjoyed modern cinematic adaptations of Shakespeare. Kurosawa’s Ran was a favorite of mine for many years, and not just because of the Takemitsu soundtrack. However, having mostly been a consumer of Shakespeare through non-literary means, when it comes to sitting down with the actual texts from the plays, I have to admit I still get a little lost. So, in the manner of a true...