Escape is a three minute piano étude written for Tamara Stefanovich. Initial research led me to the Spanish photographer Xavi Bou's work: Traces - The Invisible Flight Patterns of Birds. Bou captured hundreds of images of birds for each frame, and then layered them upon each other to show the movement that is created when they fly. The mesmerising results often appear like swirling black ribbons or drifting double helices and presented an array of different geneses for writing a set of études exploring flight patterns of English songbirds. 

Escape is an unbridled, often hushed, and muted, impression of flight patterns created by a flock of starlings. Particular appeal came from studying different Murmurations, 'flash expansions' - where the flock separates into sub-flocks to reduce cohesion, 'wave' patterns, and 'blackening' events - when the starlings compact together to appear more intimidating to a predator.