otherworld by Maddie Ashman

When I was writing Otherworld, I was thinking of questions like what if the guitar could sing? Or speak? What if the guitar could express beyond its traditional limits? What if the voice was the 'instrument' rather than the guitar?

I wanted to challenge the conventions of classical guitar and voice, principally by breaking free from the constraints of equal temperament (12 equally spaced notes). Though the fretboard conforms, the guitar strings are tuned in just intonation (pure tuning) and a slide opens up a fluid and unlimited spectrum of microtonal harmony. I wanted to explore language and communication in a limitless and playful way.

The music shifts between moments of unity and individuality—guitar and voice as one body, then as distinct entities. It reflects on Jessa Brown’s text, and how shared blood and shared experiences can simultaneously hold tension, as well as contrasting, individual perspectives.

- Maddie Ashman (composer/artist)

Otherworld is a narrative of half memories and lost voices, which draws on fragments of oral history, family stories, Welsh legends and fairytales to piece together a story across three generations of women and their relationship with their lands, their languages, and themselves. Otherworld is a loose retelling of my own grandmother, Jennifer’s story. The first movement recalls her birthplace in north Wales and her sense of belonging there, while the second and third movements follow her ambivalent relationship with her troubled and lonely mother, who later moved the family from Wales while Jenny was still a child. The fourth movement explores Jenny’s decision to learn (relearn) the Welsh language in her seventies from her home in England, as a way of reconnecting with her past self. These lyrics experiment with the process of learning a language in real time, tussling with the concept of a mother tongue, and blending fragments of Welsh with images from the Mabinogi myth of Blodeuwedd (literally, ‘blossom-faced), a goddess made of wild flowers who was later transformed into an owl for her betrayal of her husband. In this myth, I saw some of the strange symmetries of the women in my own life, especially in the central metaphor of transformation, which proves both painful and generative for its protagonist. The final movement tracks my own journey towards understanding my grandmother and her past - a process which remains ongoing, incomplete. As such, Otherworld is also a representation of what it’s like to reconstruct one’s earliest memories and ancestral inheritance through language, landscape, legend and lyric - and the revelation in the end that these efforts of learning and unlearning, forgetting and remembering, are a cycle in which nothing is ever truly lost.

- Jessa Brown (lyrics)

Hello! I am a composer and songwriter from London. I love writing microtonal music- in particular, I am fascinated by the resonance and unlimited possibilities of just intonation (pure tuning).

I love writing music that is genre-fluid, and I love challenging the boundaries of instruments. I'm interested in the 'unspoken', 'what ifs' and 'unexpected'.

Lots to come this year! <3

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