Why I no longer compose concert works professionally

I’ve come to recognise that the contemporary music world is not where my work belongs. Its ideological stranglehold on what ‘authentic’ music should do — and its tendency to prioritise cleverness, theory, and cultural signalling over human contact — ultimately made me realise that I was a fish out of water there. Over time, I also began to feel that there was little room for someone of my background and profile within the current climate. That feeling, though difficult to face, clarified my thinking.

My musical instinct has always been towards movement, towards affect, towards the audience — and that was never quite understood or valued in that scene. Rather than continuing to fight for a place in a system whose values contradict my own, I’ve chosen to move on. My past technique isn’t lost. It now informs a new direction: writing music that exists for people, not institutions.

While I’m no longer composing concert works professionally, I have not renounced the medium. If such music emerges in the future, it will do so quietly and on my own terms — without expectation, justification, or the need for it to belong to any particular world.