Therma is an orchestral re-imagining of an early unperformed work of mine, List 1; the since and again, a fourteen-minute piece for eleven solo strings written for a composition competition which took place in Rome and Thessaloniki in 2005. Compressing this much longer work into a 4-minute orchestral piece became a process of distillation. I removed all nonessential material until all that remained was a stark, skeletal outline which barely resembled the original work. But Therma is a re-imagining rather than an orchestration of my earlier work. It also incorporates my somewhat hazy memories of travelling to Rome and especially Thessaloniki where we stayed in a thoroughly bizarre hotel on a mountain overlooking the city. Giant chandeliers, a cocktail pianist in a bar with no patrons, and an empty swimming pool all contributed to it seeming like a cross between The Shining and the hastily abandoned set of 70s-era James Bond film. Therma (Θέρμα) was the original name of Thessaloniki when it was founded in 7th century BC. Built on a mosquito-infested swamp it was named after the Greek word for malarial fever.

from notes by Christopher Mayo © 2013