Matilda's Kitchen Suite

In Matilda's Kitchen Suite, we first meet the Kitchen Bench — homely, but solid, and a good place for hanging out, sharing meals and stories with the family. The Giant Clock in this particular kitchen was completely out of proportion — a huge, industrial thing you'd expect to find at a railway station rather than in a cosy kitchen, but that only made it more exciting. In Dreams in a Biscuit Tin, we play with words: drömmar, Swedish for "dreams," are also light and airy biscuits with a hint of vanilla that melt in your mouth. The funkiest biscuit tin in Matilda's kitchen, as it happens, was filled to the brim with these delicious little dreams!
An Iron Stove is a must in any country home, to keep out the chill on wintery days — and I think you can hear the fire sizzling right through this piece.

In the Bird Suite, there's an overarching storyline, but each movement also works as a standalone performance piece. I should add that the first and last movements are noticeably easier and more accessible for junior players than the two middle movements, which demand more technical skill.
In Nesting, a gentle melody in 3/4 metre is passed between the parts at the beginning and the end. The middle section is a little fugue-like and calls for careful counting, before a third section builds powerfully from piano to forte. At the end, we return via Da Capo to close on the gentle opening melody.
Hatching opens with col legno — the players tap with the wood of the bow, mimicking little beaks knocking against the eggshell from the inside. Then the hatching begins, and the youngsters tumble all over the place (I should mention that we happened to be breeding chickens at the time I wrote this piece!). At the end, once all the lively chaos has settled, there's one single col legno knock left — the last chick, still waiting to hatch.
In Feeding, you hear the baby birds competing for their parents' attention, each eager to be fed first. The lower instruments represent the parents arriving to feed the hungry little beaks.
Spread Your Wings was originally written as a kind of blessing for our nephew's christening, and has since been used as a blessing for many other occasions too. It's gentle and beautiful, and very accessible even for younger players — for quartet and orchestra alike.