New opera – for Aldeburgh Festival 2023 and the Linbury Theatre, Royal Opera House, 2024. Giant tells the story of surgeon John Hunter’s obsession with Charles Byrne – a man he would ultimately betray in one of the most disturbing acts in the era of the grave robbers.
Avenging female voices meet percussion, ancient instruments and otherwordly electronic effects, in this feature film score by Sarah Angliss for UK horror film Amulet, written and directed by Romola Garai. Premiered Sundance 2020, now on release.
Contemporary voice and the sounds of 1920s radio take flight along a London street, in this new piece exploring resonances between early wireless and telepathy. For Nick Ryan’s VoiceLine, a 39-speaker array which stretched 170m along the The Strand, outside the old BBC Marconi building.
Composition and sound design for The Hairy Ape (1922) – Eugene O’Neill’s expressionist masterpiece which uses the overwhelming sounds of the engine room on an ocean liner to explore dehumanisation and the shock of modernity. At The Old Vic, London, and Park Avenue Armory, New York. Directed by Richard Jones.
A short biography of composer Daphne Oram, co-founder of the BBC Radiophonic workshop and inventor of the Oramics ‘drawn sound’ system. For a reprint of her treatise on sound, electronics and metaphysics.
In production. This timely collaboration with musicians and poet Hannah Lowe explores the UK’s deep connection with wind and tide. With thanks to PRS for Music Foundation and Britten Pears Arts.
Centuries before the advent of the phonograph, captured songbirds were trained to sing fashionable melodies in the home. In this documentary for BBC Radio 4, Sarah explores the surprising history of teaching songbirds to sing. Produced by Neil McCarthy.
Through music, poetry, archive and the sound engineer’s toolbox, Sarah Angliss explores our enduring and sometimes deathly fascination with the echo. A Radio 4 documentary produced by Peregrine Andrews and Farshoreline.
A sound effect as Alcina the sorcerer’s ‘magical urn’ is smashed at the climax of the show. For the Royal Opera House, directed by Richard Jones.
Composition and sound design for the for the first official stage production of The Twilight Zone in 2017. Adapted by Anne Washburn from the classic 1960s CBS television series and is directed by Richard Jones. At The Almeida Theatre and Ambassadors (West End), London.
Presenting and co-researching this history of sound effects for BBC Radio Archive on 4. The show marks 200 years since Thomas De Quincey wrote On the Knocking at the Gate in Macbeth, his early consideration of the powerful psychological impact of sound on stage. Produced by Resonance FM.
A tourable, large-scale video triptych of The Machinery, a piece exploring women and mechanised labour, created by Sarah Angliss, Caroline Radcliffe – filmed by video artist John Harrison in 2018. Supported by ACE.
Combining the robotic carillon with a machine learning algorithm from Dan Stowell to hear automatic transcriptions of the dawn chorus played by polyphonic bells. For International Dawn Chorus Day.
Sarah’s album from 2017. Inspired by London folklore past and present, Ealing Feeder is steeped in the sounds of sirens, wrestling rings, the Thames and the London tree canopy.
A chapter on the extraordinary life and work of Muriel Howorth, science fiction writer, composer, choreographer and pioneering atomic gardener. For The Odditorium, a compendium edited by David Bramwell and Jo Keeling.
Some reflections on noise and 1920s modernity, as expressed in Eugene O’Neill’s ‘The Hairy Ape’. This includes some archival discoveries about early performances. These notes were made after I’d composed a score for a new production of the play and contributed to the Science Museum research forum ‘Noise, Music and Silence’.
Sound design for this revival of Once in a Lifetime at The Young Vic, London, directed by Richard Jones. Predating the screwball comedies of the 1930s, this play by Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman was first performed only two years after The Jazz Singer became the first commercial talking picture and a worldwide hit.
A 28 note robotic, polyphonic carillon built by Sarah Angliss to play riffs beyond the envelope of human performance. The machine enables tangible performances of algorithmic music controlled by a laptop.
An album of dreamlike music from 2019, distilling Sarah Angliss’ latest work with ancient instruments and extraordinary electroacoustic techniques. Air Loom was performed along with highlights from Ealing Feeder on a UK tour in 2019, featuring vocalist Sarah Gabriel and percussionist Stephen Hiscock.
Written just before the pandemic, thoughts on the design of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, and its minimalist Doomsday Clock which coldly measured the fluctuating risks to humanity during The Cold War and beyond. For The Wire Magazine.
A selection of earlier recorded work, including guest spots on other albums by Moon Wiring Club and the Ghostbox Study Series (with label co-founders Belbury Poly).
A chapter on musicians’ attitudes towards the first drum machines and samplers, in this book published by the Smithsonian Institution Scholarly Press (2013).
Published online by Wire Magazine (June 2014), Unheimlich Manoeuvres is a short essay on ventriloquism and the uncanny. It’s illustrated with videos of many fine ventriloquists including Ray Alan, Arthur Worsley and the great Terri Rogers.
A short statement on my work with algorithms and robotics, for The Oxford Handbook of Algorithmic Music. Edited by Roger T Dean and Alex McLean, Oxford University Press 2013.
A polyphonic 64-pipe self-playing table-top pipe organ, built by Sarah Angliss and Colin Uttley from salvaged Welsh chapel organ parts. Exhibited at Supersonic’s All Ears Festival, 2015.
Composition for the first performance of The Effect – a love story set on a clinical drugs trial. Written by Lucy Prebble, this play explores sanity, neuroscience and the limits of medicine. A co-production between the National Theatre and Headlong, directed by Rupert Goold.
Recreating a 1970s algorthmic dance piece by pen and paper-based systems artist Channa Horwitz
Composing and extemporising an original underscore for a live adaptation of John Wyndham’s sci fi novel The Midwich Cuckoos. For Cinecity Festival, Brighton, 2014, in partnership with Film Archive South East, for the BFI season Sci Fi – Days of Fear and Wonder.
Researching and creating a generative 50-channel soundscape to reanimate the submarine HMS Alliance. Informed by detailed research with veteran submariners.
Experimenting with a novel, deep bass tactile sound effect for Punchdrunk, the encounter theatre company. The Manchester International Festival.
A paper with performer and theatre historian Caroline Radcliffe on our interpretion of The Machinery. This astounding industrial dance from the early nineteeth century was devised by women working in the Lancashire cotton mills. Wearing clogs, they copied the sounds and actions of the factory machines. In Performance Research.
A live score for voice, acoustic instruments and electronics for Webber and Watson’s 1928 expressionist masterpiece The Fall of the House of Usher.
In this optimistic view of mechanisation for TEDx Brighton (2011), Sarah reveals some surprising connections between two types of dance music, inspired by the relentless beat of the factory machine, which flourished two centuries apart. The earliest was devised by women working in Lancashire cotton mills.
Background notes from Sarah’s TEDx talk Loving the Machine.
Background notes on the Bird Fancyer’s Delight, including a list of music in the show, example tunes for birds and transcripts from treatise on teaching your birds to sing.
A podcast drawing on the botanical writing of Hildegard von Bingen, twelfth-century Christian mystic, exploring affinities with her time and ours, as we live through the Covid pandemic.
Researched and devised by Sarah Angliss, this show delves into rarely seen archives and personal testimony to tell the story of Britain’s secretive nuclear survivalists. Awarded most groundbreaking show of Brighton Festival and Fringe 2013.
One of my earliest automata, Ventricle is an oxblood red vintage handbag about the same age as my own heart. It opens and closes continually, in the rhythm of a human heartbeat. Exhibited at Kinetica 2011 then selected for temporary display in Gavin Turk and Deborah Curtis’ House of Fairytales.
A controlled psychological experiment, in the form of two back-to-back concerts. These concerts were highly unusual because some of the music was laced with infrasound (extreme bass sound, below 20Hz in frequency). It took place in the Purcell Room, London, in 2003.
A description of the pure-tone infrasound generator, specially designed for our experiments by the UK National Physical Laboratory. This page includes a critique of the resultant method of creating infrasonic notes for experiments.