THE HISTORY OF DUST PAGE
DUST 2026 UPDATE
Dust was formed in 2015 by Sarah Laughton and Lizzie Holyoak, seeking out Medieval and Renaissance music to play on contemporary instruments in our own arrangements. Initially, we explored the combination of Sarah’s bass clarinet with Lizzie’s voice, sometimes supported by a piano accordion drone. We happily arranged the 13th-century anonymous sung sermon Worldes Blis and Dowland’s Flow My Tears. It was a joy to sing solo with bass clarinet.
We added solo clarinet pieces with piano accompaniment and gradually moved on to include Baroque music. Soon, we also formed the Favio Ensemble, focusing on Baroque repertoire and arranging a wide range of music for voice, clarinet, flute, oboe and keyboard. This included our own version of Handel’s Erbarme Dich with oboe obbligato. Once this group had run its course, Sarah and I invited Elizabeth Marsh to add her fluting to our Dust world. We arranged further Renaissance songs for our trio, including works by Caccini and the lovely Pupil Aciere by the wonderfully named Giovanni Baptista Gagliani.
We have continued to evolve together and in recent years have moved towards a mix of more contemporary and original music alongside some classics. In our musical choices, we value our diverse palette of instrumental possibilities, which has inspired Lizzie’s compositions. Bass clarinet, soprano saxophone, alto flute and Elizabeth’s world flutes particularly stand out, offering varied colours in our programmes. For example, our arrangements of Fauré’s songs include Après un rêve for bass clarinet and piano and Clair de Lune for soprano saxophone and piano. Elizabeth also included Böhm’s arrangement of Schubert’s Ständchen for alto flute in our 2023 programme, as well as pieces for her Chinese dong xiao flute.
Both Sarah and Elizabeth also enjoy substantial classical solos, with Schumann and Fauré featuring in our current programme. Among our contemporary pieces are Nocturne by Norwegian composer Kvandal, and Dreamer and Filing Clerks by John Blood. From the early twentieth century, we enjoy seeking out lesser-known composers and are currently particularly interested in Gabriel Grovlez. His Sarabande for clarinet, along with Lizzie’s arrangement of his piano piece La Sarabande for clarinet and piano, form part of our 2026 programme. We first encountered Grovlez through his monumental piano work Westminster Abbey, which we arranged for bass clarinet and piano.
There will always be some Satie in our repertoire, especially his lesser-known music; his earlier set of Gnossiennes sounds wonderful on bass clarinet. Lizzie is currently arranging yet another sarabande — Satie’s Sarabande No. 1 — for the trio.
In 2023, Sarah created her Axmouth Suite for solo clarinet and has recently been experimenting with an arrangement for soprano saxophone. Elizabeth has explored Chinese and Native American pieces for her world flutes and has also composed for them. Lizzie has created two suites for the ensemble: her February Suite (2024) and her latest work, Box of Treats (2026), which will be premiered in the autumn. Lizzie has now retired from singing to focus on piano and composition, having recorded and released her own album of songs, Nighthawks, in 2025. In her composing world, Dave Weir is her treasured partner in crime, transcribing her handwritten manuscripts into sheet music.
Dust has recorded two albums with Jon Webb at the Moonbase in Coventry and is planning a third for release in autumn 2026, which is also when we will be out performing again. There has been a hiatus in our performance schedule due to illness, but we have each continued “Dusting” privately in the meantime, carrying forward our unique mixture of the expected and the unexpected.
The Old Windmill Pub in Spon Street, Coventry is a firm favourite to play our music. We also performed at Temperance Cafe in Leamington Spa, The Minster in Axminster, St. Michael's Church at Axmouth and at the tiny remote church in Cudworth, Somerset.
DUST 2024 ALBUM dedicated to Neil Kulkarni
In 2024 Lizzie gave up classical singing to return to her singer songwriter roots and continued to write new music, often inspired by life events, such as "Edge" which was written in a bit of a temper, due to being embarrassingly socially snubbed!!
(Thanks to Frank Dawkins for processing the sheet music.)
2025 started with completion of the Dusted Music 2025 album. Following this, Lizzie recorded her Nighthawks album and the extended Dusted Music troupe recorded our rock number called "Now or Never".
