Macbeth

WHY MACBETH?

Following the success of my dance piece On the Nile, I’ve started a new project—a musical adaptation of Shakespeare’s Macbeth that will also ultimately become an evening-length, narrative dance to be performed sometime in early 2026.

In the meantime, instead of writing the entire piece and then releasing an album, I’ve decided to release one or two pieces every couple of weeks. I have a tendency to compose in fits and starts, so this will keep my momentum going and give you a peek into my creative process.

Why Macbeth?

Not only is it one of Shakespeare’s greatest and most performed plays, I think I’m just drawn in our present moment to stories where the megalomaniacal tyrant gets what’s coming to him. But there’s more to it than that. For one, I’m allegedly a direct descendant of King Duncan and his son, Malcolm—both key characters in the play—and that link, however tenuous, also informs my desire to explore the story through my music. Plus, I like witches.

I’m using Shakespeare’s Macbeth as my primary text, but not my only one. Shakespeare based the play on Raphael Holinshed’s Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland, a pseudo-historical account of the British Isles, which I’m also reading (or, more accurately, trying to read). I’m also consulting historical and archaeological reports written by those who’ve been trying for centuries to untangle the myth of Macbeth from the real person, in addition to consulting a raft of Shakespeare scholarship. I’m having a lot of flashbacks to my undergrad days at NYU, sitting up on the top floors of Bobst Library, immersed in back issues of Shakespeare Quarterly.

Under the influence of Brian Eno and John Cage, I am allowing random chance to dictate the order in which these pieces are both composed and released. There are twenty-eight scenes in Macbeth, and rather than simply go through them start to finish, I use a random number generator to pick a number that corresponds to a given scene in the play. This randomized method is to keep me from falling into too many patterns—I don’t want any piece to necessarily relate directly to the one before it or after it, and writing them out of order serves that purpose. Plus, life is random. We impose order on it, but it’s more chaos than anything else, and Macbeth is all about the chaos. Thus, I am writing chaotically.

I will be the first to admit that this whole project is a little weird. But they are the weird sisters, right?

Below, please find videos to all the pieces that have been released so far. They are in the order in which the scenes appear in the play, not the order in which they've been released. This first piece, "Two Sisters" is non-canonical--a prelude, if you will, to the action of the play.

MACBETH SKETCHBOOK No. 1: The Album

To celebrate the completion of the first half (give or take) of the project, I've released sixteen tracks as the album Macbeth Sketchbook No. 1. It is available as a digital download or CD exclusively on Bandcamp. Go to http://jamesnevius.bandcamp.com.

SOUD + FURY: The Contemporary Ballet

Watch this space for information on the 2026 premiere of this piece as a full-length evening of modern ballet.

stream the videos here

Two Sisters

PRELUDE

In Shakespeare's Macbeth, there are three witches—aka the “weird sisters”—who kick off the play and give Macbeth the prophecy that he will be king of Scotland. But what if at some unknown point before the action of Macbeth begins, there were only two weird sisters? What if the third one hadn’t joined them yet? That’s the basis of this 54-second ditty. There’s a heck of a lot of Brian Eno and John Cage in the DNA of this entire project and there will be a lot of music based on other music. This is one of those pieces. What you are hearing is my arrangement (by which I mean severe rearrangement) of a Scottish folks song, “Two Heads Are Better Than Yin” (Two Heads are Better Than One).

When the Hurly-Burly's Done

When my random number generator picked the opening scene of Macbeth just after it had picked the closing scene of the play ("The Time is Free," below), I figured there must be a ghost in the machine. Or, at the very least, a witch.

Macbeth famously opens with the three witches (aka "weird sisters") talking about when they'll next get together. Here's the whole scene:

FIRST WITCH When shall we three meet again? In thunder, lightning, or in rain?

SECOND WITCH When the hurly-burly’s done, When the battle’s lost and won.

THIRD WITCH That will be ere the set of sun.

FIRST WITCH Where the place?

SECOND WITCH Upon the heath.

THIRD WITCH There to meet with Macbeth.

FIRST WITCH I come, Graymalkin.

SECOND WITCH Paddock calls.

THIRD WITCH Anon.

ALL Fair is foul, and foul is fair; Hover through the fog and filthy air.

It takes less time to read this dialog than it takes to listen to my piece, but I'm sure that's going to be a running theme in a play that is composed of so many short vignettes.

The first thing you'll notice about this music is how upbeat it sounds. That's on purpose. The witches are often depicted as sinister, dark figures, but they are some of the only characters to come out of the play unscathed. They are simply soothsayers--their prophecy kicks of the action of the tragedy, but they play no other role and (in my mind, at least) just go back about their witchy business. Much ink has been spilled over the years about the significance of the drunken porter in Act 2, Scene 3 as one of the only moments of levity in the play. But I'd like to think the witches bring an aspect of playfulness to the table, as well.

I fed the text of Act 1, Scene 1, into the A.I. video generator and this is what it spat out. Not bad. Not good, mind you, but not terrible. Enjoy.

What He Hath Lost, Noble Macbeth Hath Won

More A.I.-generated madness.

This is Act 1, Scene 2 of Macbeth -- and we haven't actually met our title character yet. He's been mentioned in the first scene by the Three Witches and now, in this scene, King Duncan of Scotland receives news of Macbeth's bravery in battle. A wounded captain describes how Macbeth killed the traitor Macdonwald by slicing him from "the nave to the chaps." Ross and Angus arrive and add that Macbeth also helped defeat the invading Norwegian king and the traitorous Thane of Cawdor. Duncan decided to elevate Macbeth to become Thane of Cawdor, ending the scene with the title of this piece, "What he hath lost, noble Macbeth hath won."

I make these A.I. videos by feeding in the actual Shakespearean text and seeing what comes out the other end. No Death Star this time! (See "Let Us Be Beaten if We Cannot Fight" below.)

So Foul and Fair a Day (Sueno's Stone)

This is the scene (Act 1, Scene 3) where Macbeth meets the three "Weird Sisters" or witches for the first time. I want to mostly talk about how totally weird this video is, but a note on the production side. At the beginning and end you'll hear the cry of a seagull. I recorded this particular one in Forres, Scotland, where this scene is set. The sound of rain that swells and recedes behind the music is one part sound effect, one part a rain storm recorded by Loch Morlich in Cairngorms National Park.

My time in the Highlands was very much punctuated by the "foul and fair" description that Macbeth speaks in this scene. Some days, it could be blue skies one minute, pouring rain the next. But other days the weather was somewhere in between, never quite sure if it was going to tilt toward foul or fair.

Anyway: the video.

I've long been compelled by the question: "What makes bad A.I.-generated art sometimes so good?"

It finally struck me that the answer is Dada. (As in the early 20th-century art movement, not as in one's father.) Bad A.I. art lacks any emotional resonance or artistic merit, but good (or "good") A.I. art embraces, quite by accident, the absurdity and randomness at the heart of the Dadaist movement. And can, on occasion, be shockingly interesting.

I used LTX Studio to create these images with both a visual prompt--a photo I'd taken of the Pictish stone in Forres--and then a written prompt asking it to show the three Weird Sisters waiting on the heath for Macbeth--with a seagull. (I then changed "Weird Sisters" to "witches" and ran it again.)

Words fail to do justice to how weird the results are. Just watch.

Stars, Hide Your Fires

Instead of typical music video, I created a work of art to accompany this piece which describe Macbeth's inner turmoil in Act 1, Scene 4. The piece pulls random images from the collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art that reflect Macbeth's inner turmoil.

What I love about this artwork is that some of the imagery seems spot on--pictures of assassins or of witches gathering on the heath. But other images seem to make no sense at all, and those are ones I think I like the best.

The video here just gives you a small sample of the artwork. To truly experience it in all its glory, click the button.

STARS, HIDE YOUR FIRES

Twice Done and Then Done Double

In Act 1, Scene 6 of Macbeth, the King, Duncan, arrives at Inverness Castle ahead of Macbeth and is greeted by Lady Macbeth. Duncan remarks on what a nice place it is -- the "air nimbly and sweetly recommends itself unto our gentle senses." Lady Macbeth is all smiles and kindness, but the audience knows from the previous scene (which I haven't written the music for yet) that she's already scheming to have Macbeth usurp Duncan.

What you see in this video is a watercolor of Inverness Castle -- as it looks today. (I created the painting from a photo I took from the opposite shores of the River Ness.) That castle bears no relation to the one in which Macbeth and Lady Macbeth would have lived. As in so many places in Scotland, multiple castles have been erected over the centuries on the same strategic piece of land. So, while it's probable that Macbeth's seat was on this rocky promontory, this is a 19th-century fortification. I digitally removed anything modern from this image, made it gloomy, and added the moon.

Upon This Bank and Shoal of Time

We'll get to the A.I. "slop" that makes up this video at the end of this comment. But first, where does this fall in Macbeth? This line is taken from one of Macbeth's most famous soliloquies, in Act 1, Scene 7, where he says:

"If it were done when ’tis done, then ’twere well

It were done quickly. If th’ assassination

Could trammel up the consequence and catch

With his surcease success, that but this blow

Might be the be-all and the end-all here,

But here, upon this bank and shoal of time,

We’d jump the life to come."

Macbeth is cognizant of the consequences of his plan (spoiler alert) to kill King Duncan. He realizes that if he kills Duncan and receives the reward promised to him by the three witches/weird sisters, he will likely be sacrificing his eternal reward in heaven. Is that a chance he's willing to take?

The source music for this piece isn't Scottish--it's Irish, though the connections between the Gaels and Scots are well documented. It's a mournful traditional tune called "Sad Is My Fate." I've taken the primary melodic line and turned it into a round that keeps getting faster and faster and faster, thus mirroring Macbeth's growing anxiety. The piece starts at 30 beats per minute and by the time it's over, we're cooking at 180 bpm. (I am imagining this as a solo dance for Macbeth whenever the choreographed component of this project get underway, where there dance repeats the same phrases in an ever-faster, ever-more-chaotic manner.)

As for the video: I love putting in passages from Macbeth and telling the A.I. algorithms to create abstract imagery based on them. A.I. really struggles with the idea of abstraction--hence every image in this has the sea and a human figure. It's pretty terrible stuff--which is why I love it.

Will All Great Neptune's Ocean Wash This Blood Clean from my Hand?

In Act 2, Scene 2 of Macbeth, Macbeth returns to Lady Macbeth after murdering King Duncan, deeply shaken and overwhelmed with guilt. He is disturbed by his inability to say "Amen" after hearing someone pray and fixates on the blood on his hands, asking, "Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood clean from my hand?"—a reflection of his belief that nothing can cleanse him of the crime.

Hours Dreadful and Things Strange

“Hours Dreadful and Things Strange” is my attempt to capture the unsettling mood of Macbeth Act 2, Scene 4. In this scene, Ross and an Old Man (who is, perhaps, a stand-in for the old order) speak of ominous signs: darkness during the day, falcons killed by owls, horses that are bolting and attacking each other.. As Macduff enters to report Macbeth’s coronation and the suspicious flight of Duncan’s sons, the music leans into this unease, reflecting not only the collapse of moral order but the creeping dread that something darker has just begun. This is a crucial moment in the play and I'm really pleased with the way the composition turned out.

As for the video, I continue to play around with A.I. generation. I used the key lines from this scene as the prompts and these are the illustrations that the LLM spat out. Moody, for sure, though it's no "Throne of Blood."

O, Full of Scorpions is My Mind

This composition is the sonic accompaniment to Macbeth, Act 3, Scene 2 — a moment where paranoia and ambition entangle inside the mind of a man unraveling. Paired with a series of A.I.-generated, semi-abstract oil paintings inspired by key lines from Shakespeare’s text, the piece explores the emotional terrain of Macbeth’s descent. Each painting functions as a symbolic landscape of a quote: a crown rotting from within, a scorched serpent in a world of disjointed order, scorpions seething in a tangle of thought. What does it feel like to be trapped in a mind full of fear, power, and the knowledge that "things bad begun make strong themselves by ill"?

In Riddles and Affairs of Death (Variations on Bach)

This piece is a bit of a throwaway (can I admit that?) that probably won't make it into the final dance. That's because the scene it is meant to represent (Act 3, Scene 5), where the three witches meet Hecate, is almost certainly not written by Shakespeare. It adds nothing to plot and, in fact, slows the action down. I can understand why it was added -- the witches don't have a lot to do after their initial prophecies -- so I'm sure some well-meaning dramatists wanted to both gives these actors more time on stage and amp up the "spooky" factor at the same time. But I think it won't make the cut in my production. We'll see.

The witches leitmotif (which appears in a number of other pieces I've written so far) is stolen from Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D Minor. So, what I chose to do here is simply take a famous passage from that piece and turn it into a sort of psychotic round. The subtitle of this piece is "Variations on Bach" but it might as well be "Fun with MIDI."

Whither Should I Fly?

In Act 4, Scene 2 of Macbeth, Lady Macduff is confused and angry over her husband’s sudden flight to England, feeling he has abandoned his family. She speaks with her young son, and their conversation is briefly light-hearted before a messenger warns them to flee. Moments later, Macbeth’s hired murderers arrive. As they attack, Lady Macduff cries out, "Whither should I fly?"—a desperate question revealing her sense of helplessness. She and her son are brutally murdered, marking a turning point as Macbeth’s tyranny deepens and the violence extends to innocent lives.

The MACBETH SKETCHBOOKS

Stream songs from my new, ongoing Macbeth project