Uploaded October 2020 | Updated September 2026, 2 days ago
Composed by Anna Semple (Composition)
This work offers space for pause and thinking on the nature of isolation, and how sound defined aspects of our experiences in lockdown. The artist used crowd sourced 5-second sound summaries of people’s lockdown experiences, sourced via social media, along with soft sounds recorded of the artists own environment, to produce an ambient, but ever-changing soundscape.
Pause Animations
These 25-minute animated sound works were composed at the start of the 2020 lockdown. The six pieces aim to encourage listeners to take a pause with meditative sounds and visuals, and include sound recordings made during the first months of the lockdown period.
Animation by Lucy Harper
About the artist
Anna Semple studied Composition at Guildhall School of Music & Drama (generously supported by the HR Taylor Trust), studying with Matthew Kaner. Commissions include works for the Royal Opera House, The Choir of St John’s College, Cambridge, the Choir of New College Oxford, The Choir of Clare College Cambridge, Mad Song and the Edington Fetsival 2021. She has worked with a variety of artists including vocal consort Exaudi and solo accordionist Miloš Milivojević via Psappha’s ‘Composing for’ scheme.
Anna’s first opera was performed at the Royal Conservatoire of Soctland in Glasgow in June 2019 and she has recently had work published in the Multitude of Voyce’s SATB Anthems Anthology. Anna enjoys working with text and has previously collaborated with librettists Gareth Mattey, Susannah Pearse, and Kaitlin Sullivan, and is particularly interested in the sounds and rhythms of speech, and the capabilities of the voice to communicate as a direct extension of the physical body. In her instrumental work Anna often uses text as a starting point, particularly that with strong visual or structural elements, and is keen to explore alternative forms of narrative and time.
Composed by Anna Semple (Composition)
This work offers space for pause and thinking on the nature of isolation, and how sound defined aspects of our experiences in lockdown. The artist used crowd sourced 5-second sound summaries of people’s lockdown experiences, sourced via social media, along with soft sounds recorded of the artists own environment, to produce an ambient, but ever-changing soundscape.
Pause Animations
These 25-minute animated sound works were composed at the start of the 2020 lockdown. The six pieces aim to encourage listeners to take a pause with meditative sounds and visuals, and include sound recordings made during the first months of the lockdown period.
Animation by Lucy Harper
About the artist
Anna Semple studied Composition at Guildhall School of Music & Drama (generously supported by the HR Taylor Trust), studying with Matthew Kaner. Commissions include works for the Royal Opera House, The Choir of St John’s College, Cambridge, the Choir of New College Oxford, The Choir of Clare College Cambridge, Mad Song and the Edington Fetsival 2021. She has worked with a variety of artists including vocal consort Exaudi and solo accordionist Miloš Milivojević via Psappha’s ‘Composing for’ scheme.
Anna’s first opera was performed at the Royal Conservatoire of Soctland in Glasgow in June 2019 and she has recently had work published in the Multitude of Voyce’s SATB Anthems Anthology. Anna enjoys working with text and has previously collaborated with librettists Gareth Mattey, Susannah Pearse, and Kaitlin Sullivan, and is particularly interested in the sounds and rhythms of speech, and the capabilities of the voice to communicate as a direct extension of the physical body. In her instrumental work Anna often uses text as a starting point, particularly that with strong visual or structural elements, and is keen to explore alternative forms of narrative and time.
