Prior to the 20th century, and the emergent dominance of equal temperament, the association of emotions with particular musical keys was common practice. 

Prior to lockdown the Black Glass Ensemble addressed this historical alignment of sound and emotion to offer a brief ‘embrace’ in B Minor - the key associated with patience. 

The embrace, a textured drone featuring the musicians of the Black Glass Ensemble and guest Colin Potter, with whom they were scheduled to perform was well received on social media.

After the lockdown began, Black Glass sought to widen the reach of their embrace to other musicians to make a more comprehensive piece of work. The idea was as provocative as it was simple: Get as many artists as possible from our networks to commit to an embrace, the most natural of human gestures in times of anguish - and the one thing we were forbidden from doing. The submissions for the embrace - in the form of acoustic, electronic, manipulated, processed, twisted, sung, strung, bowed and struck sound material all tuned to the pitches contained within a B minor chord arrived in waves.

The response was unprecedented. 104 musicians returned 247 individual musical tracks to be mixed down by Michael Begg into a restless, swirling Gargantuan expression of solidarity embracing seasoned classical players, key figures in the European electronic Avant-garde, post rock alt. legends, music teachers, students, and hobbyists.

The full 39 minute work, “Be Mine in Patience: an Embrace in B minor” was (and still is) made freely available via Soundcloud and Bandcamp in the hope that this embrace may help in some small way to nurture strength, fortitude and comfort.