About this work:
We are living through dark times. My recent work has been written largely in response to the events of the day, music composed as reminders that we can be better. In between pieces, feeling rather like composing music in the face of it all is akin to fiddling while Rome burns, I was pleased to open my email to read a request from Nurhan Arman, conductor of Sinfonia Toronto, to compose music for the Sinfonia’s 25th anniversary season next year. For that, I would pen cheerful, bouyant music! The world needs it, I suppose.
The title came, like most thoughts do, via a stream of associations. A 25th anniversary is a silver anniversary. Yeats’ famous line, golden apples of the sun, silver apples of the moon, popped into mind – but that phrase has already been taken for music far more reknowned than this will be! Silver, that bright metal, is also associated with Artemis, goddess of the moon, who carries a silver bow, shooting silver arrows. As I composed the music, images of the goddess, silvery beams of light flitting through woods as she hunts and the twang of her bow string turned into music.