Mark Simpson: death in D flat major

He is a visceral and wildly idealistic composer – but even Simpson was surprised by the scale of his new work about the afterlife, premiered at the Manchester international festival on 4 JulyMark Simpson is showing me the score of his new piece, The Immortal. “I felt like I was in a trance when I was writing it,” says the 26-year-old composer, clarinettist, and Liverpudlian musical polymath. “There was a period when I didn’t leave the house for 10 days. When I finished it, after seven