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the end of the beginning: CD
Solo for Elisabeth was written for the Parisian guitarist Elisabth Erhlacher and first performed by Alan Thomas at spnm Solo Spotlights series. It is one a number of works concerned with virtuosity and in particular our perception of performance. All the sounds on the tape are derived from the guitar and the work explores and amplifies sounds which are not usually heard. The solo classical guitar is played with a plectrum on this recording. See Score
Four Comedic Studies was commissioned by William Raaijman and written after a period of experimentation concerned with the production of quarter-tones on the saxophone. The piece is written in a fully structured quarter-tone idiom and is playful and energetic in orientation. William performed the pieces a number of times in Holland and London. See Scores of
in preparation See Scores and the introduction for background. in preparation is a piece which can have quite different treatments in performance. Some possibilities are discussed in the 'introduction' below. Recently, Rachel and I also did a performance with film. Because the film is designed for 2 screens and the picture does not run continuously this version was not used for the DVD. However, you can see 2 extracts from the film version here: extract 1; extract 2.
Tears is a short piece written for tuba quartet which attempts to capture a moment of grief in a world which sensationalises and shocks but which does not mourn. It is tear-shaped, a heavy, full tear which falls slowly. A real but romanticised, timeless tear. The music is based on a fragment of John Dowland's song Flow my Tears. Tears was commissioned by Tubalaté with funding from Arts Council England. See Score:
Verses is an ongoing piece, written in pairs of pieces, composed as repertoire for 19-division trumpet and percussion. This is linked to an extensive project between Donald Bousted and trumpeter Stephen Altoft which is documented at: www.microtonaltrumpet.com. The title perhaps suggests the verse/chorus models of popular music although the idea of concentrating on a chorus-less verse is to work more on simple but exploratory pitch/rhythm semantics which develop in text-like ways. Verses 1 & 2 do this in relation to the acoustic instruments by moving material which first defines itself as vertically grouped into states of horizontal re-alignment. Verses 4 explores similar ideas: the whole of the second section is a near-identical repeat of the first, except that the parts are re-aligned by 8 beats. The added interest here, compared to Verses 1 & 2, however is that the percussion is a standard vibraphone, so we have a mixed 12- and 19-div tonality rather than the single trumpet tone plus kit-style percussion of Verses 1-3. Verses 4 explores memory, other worlds and nostalgia. Verses 3 takes audio and video material recorded at the National Steam Museum at Kew as a starting point. The approach is intuitive and focusses on these magnificent machines, their noises and their mechanisms, although both audio and video sources are processed to create an almost balletic response. Musically, material is ‘transposed’ from pitch to rhythm using simple transference processes which produce aurally similar results; the trumpet part is the constant source for the rhythms in the percussion. See Scores:
Slide is composed of one single shot. The video camera was mounted on a motor which was geared to complete one full rotation approximately every four minutes. The duration of the piece takes us into a fourth rotation. Filemaker's Notes was first printed in an edition of one hundred to accompany the first performance of Slide. The Notes form part of The Filemaker Files, a time-, media- and text-based project-in-progress, which focuses on a fictitious artist and his work. (notes by Gary O'Connor) In Slide, Gary and I worked independently around a time frame after much discussion about the type of work we wanted to create. Slide is written for quarter-tone trumpet with two ‘pseudo-trumpets’ which add quarter-tone harmonies and comment, at times ironically, on the live part. The CD uses many domestic and everyday sounds presented in unusual juxtaposition, sometimes treated, sometimes not. Slide was first performed at London Guildhall University in 2002 by Bruce Nockles and, in 2004, featured in 'The Home Ideal' exhibition at the Hotbath Gallery, Bath; in November 2004 Stephen Altoft toured the work in the UK. (notes by Donald Bousted) See Score
The Night which Took the Appearance of Day is a multi-layered music video in which nature is considered as the subject of art and music in the context of evocative images of an English garden in Summer. Features the voice and thoughts of the philosopher Jonathan Rée with a microtonal score based around improvisations for quarter-tone guitar.
A Memory Game uses sound recordings and footage of my parents as they disentangle memories attached to 5 photographs. The work examines their personalities, their relationship together and, to some extent, their relationship with me.
Autointrospective is an examination of self inspired by the uncompromising self-portraiture of Vincent van Gogh.
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