Eden’ was commissioned for the final of the 2005 National Championships of Great Britain and is prefaced by the lines of John Milton's, ‘Paradise Lost' written in 1663.

"The world was all before them, where to choose
Their place of rest, and providence their guide:
They hand in hand with wandering steps and slow,
Through Eden took their solitary way."

Like Milton, Pickard develops the works as a metaphor for man’s relationship with his creator and his ultimate nihilistic tendencies to reject it in favour of earthly pleasures.

The three linked sections provide a powerful template; the first exploring the figures of Adman, Eve and the questioning evil of the serpent (played by the trombone) in destroying innocence – a decision that irrevocably lead to man’s ultimate destruction.

That ‘havoc’ as the composer calls it, is explored in the central section that evokes the rapacious greed and exploitation of nature’s resources – digging out ‘ribs of gold’ from a ‘spacious wound’.

However, the final section deals with restoration and optimism, of rebirth and recreation that out of near destruction a new rebirth of hope can begin.

The composer’s use of sound and texture evokes different emotions – literal as well as symbolic, irrational to the calculating, nervous to the glorious; its darkness and jazz inflections balanced by a final section that is an intense lament that finally emerges into glorious abundance – inspired by the Eden project in Cornwall opened in 2001.