High Frequency (2021)

for piano

Commissioned by pianist Máire Carroll with funds from the Bank of Ireland Begin Together Award 2021 in partnership with Business to Arts, High Frequency for Solo Piano is a transcription of high-frequency trading data from real-time markets, forming part of the MaTE (Music as Translative Epistemology) Series exploring the emergent, chaotic dynamics of complex systems.

The piece is built around a mapping mechanism rendering 4-hr price movements into semiquavers at c.160 bpm, dividing the total range of a currency index over a 3m period equally across the 88-note piano keyboard, with crossings of the 89-day Moving Average delineating phrase structure.