‘Greta Eacott’s Gestalt Minimal is both formally and dramatically compelling in a single gesture: the ensemble starts out bunched and tied together with rope, vocalizing within the sliver of a single semitone, then expands outward both tonally and spatially until each singer becomes a node in a web’   _{- GESTALT MINIMAL; IV [2019] performed by Musarc Choir [UK], review in The Wire Magazine, August 2019}

Greta Eacott is a British percussionist and composer living on the island of Morsø in Denmark.

In her compositions, she works with simplistic, structured forms in combination with elements of indeterminacy and a minimalistic approach to material that heightens the relationships between sound and silence, movement and stillness, texture and space.

Greta Eacott’s primary focus is composing live performance works for large and small instrumental ensembles; working with both people with no experience performing music, as well as for instrumentalists at the highest professional level.

Her ‘sans disciplinary’ approach to music composition is rooted in an explorative interest in ‘Ma’, the Japanese aesthetic concept of negative space. ‘Ma’ expresses a pause in time, an interval or emptiness in space that makes way for growth and reflection. In music ‘Ma’ is found in Noh Theatre, the classical Japanese dancedrama that demonstrates a delicate balance between object and space, sound and silence, movement and rest.

Her new five part instrumental suite GESTALT MINIMAL; the love songs [OT30 · 2022] was released by One Take Records on the 3rd March 2022 and will be performed live throughout 2022-2023. 

Her works have been commissioned and performed by ensembles such as Musarc Choir [UK], New Maker Ensemble [DK], Damkapellet [DK] & G·Bop Orchestra [Int.], as well as by soloists including Christian Balvig [DK] & Derya Yildirim [DE]. As a percussionist Eacott has performed across the UK, Europe and Japan. She studied  music composition at the University of Leeds, and studied with marimba virtuoso and composer, Keiko Abe, at the Toho Gakuen School of Music, Tokyo. She completed a Nordic Master Course in Music Composition at Gothenburg Academy of Music in Sweden, and attended the Rhythmic Music Conservatory in Denmark and the Oslo Academy of Music & Drama in Norway.

- Text by Ingeborg Okkels