Blue Ginger was written for violin, viola, cello, clarinet and piano and was commissioned by the Music by the Springs Festival in Victoria, Australia. The premiere performance was given in February, 2018 with myself conducting. The work has since been performed at Ukaria in the Adelaide Hills, in St John the Evangelist Church in Oxford, UK as part of the 2019 Oxford May Music Festival, and as part of the ensemble Q 2019 Subscription Series at the Queensland Conservatorium Theatre. The above link is to the live performance given at the 2019 Oxford May Music Festival. Blue Ginger is dedicated to my late father and the inspiration for the work came from sitting at his bedside during his passing. Many of the elements of the work are musical representations of my experiences whilst sitting with him in his final hours. Musical interpretations include:

1. His sudden and dramatic breaths,
2. A distant echo of the Paul Robeson Song "Joe Hill" is heard, a song played for him in his last hours
3. A musical picture of the following hours and days of my mindset coping with his passing - sadness, anger and finally peace. Blue Ginger represents a significant change in direction in my harmonic language and my structural conceptualisation. Specific harmonic characters where linked to the main sections, which in turn were inextricably linked to the rhythmic and motivic developments. This helped give strong structural context to the various stages of the passing and grief process as the core of the emotional palette the work is ultimately based on. The developments in this chamber work were as a result and a continuation of the 18 months work on my opera "Dry River Run", and the bringing into focus here for this smaller work, has helped clarify these new elements as core to my compositional craft.