The wind in the trees takes its title from a remark by the film director D.W. Griffiths who, in 1944, lamented that ?what?s missing from movies nowadays is the beauty of the moving wind in the trees.? A brief moment of film, shot by Jobina Tinnemans in June 2020, shows the leaves of a tree animated by a summer breeze and this source imagery has been digitally processed by Aanandita Gupta, Kirke Gross and Caroline Gustafsson, scattering fragments of the image within a frame that is also constantly changing. These visual processes are counterpointed by the music in which the third movement of Debussy?s first book of Preludes, ?Le vent sur la plaine? is stretched, refracted and redistributed across fourteen minutes. Zubin and I began planning this piece in 2019 but like everything else it was interrupted by the pandemic and only finally completed in early 2022; I am indebted to Zubin, Jobina, Aandita, Caroline and Kirke for their patient devotion to the project.

The wind in the trees was commissioned by Zubin Kanga with the support of a UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship and Royal Holloway, University of London. It was premiered by Zubin Kanga on 28th April 2022 in Kettle?s Yard, Cambridge.