Commissioned by Christopher Orton and the BBC Performing Arts Fund, the music was initially composed for recorder and was first performed on 16 November 2008 at the Greenwich nternational Early Music Festival. The original recorder version of this piece received a 2009 British Composer Award from BASCA; the judging panel ‘unanimously agreed that the winning work redefines the instrument in a visionary and entirely original way. They praised it for its virtuosity, depth of expression, and powerful imagination’.