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Chris Watson  

about nothing...really

Duration: 07' 00" Year: 2010
for flute, B flat clarinet, guitar and cello

  • Programme Note

    NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTION 2010: Stop writing dishonest programme notes.

    This work was conceived in the abstract and does not relate to human experience. It does not illustrate the composer’s state of mind, he having suddenly found himself awake in the middle of the night, unable to control his thoughts. While the experience of insomnia, especially when suffered over consecutive nights, can be physically and emotionally crippling, at times the abundance and insistence of multiple streams of unwanted thought (unruly Beta waves) can be, if not pleasurable, then certainly fascinating. This piece does not seek to illustrate this through music, nor does it sonically pose this question: why does the brain seize control of the consciousness and produce such a plethora of unwanted activity that sleep is made impossible and the host becomes miserable?

    At times, certain thoughts seem to somehow rise above the melee of insomniac thought and become quite focused and of seeming import, however inane these might seem in the cold light of day. This is not portrayed in the music by infrequent parings-down of texture and emergence of single, insistent motivic ideas. The music doesn’t describe how such thoughts soon get swallowed up as the jumble of thoughts returns and the victim adjusts position once again, glancing desperately at his or her clock radio and resolving hopelessly to try to make yet another attempt at deep breathing and sheep counting work.

    The composer could claim that the work is about these things, but that would be a lie; he no longer wishes to construct programme notes after the act of composition that conform to some conceivable extra-musical agenda.

    This version of this work is the first of a number of versions, with another swapping cello for viola and another as a solo guitar piece currently projected.

    The work was requested by Dylan Lardelli and is dedicated to this increasingly mythic musician.

  • Availability

Chris Adams  

Antonyms of Trust

Duration: 10' 00" Year: 2010
for actor and orchestra

Chris Adams  

Art Miniatures

Duration: 20' 00" Year: 2010
for flute and piano

Alex Taylor  

Attention:

Duration: 09' 00" Year: 2010
for actor and orchestra

  • Instrumentation
    2022; 4331; timp; 2 perc; strings
  • Programme Note

    On May 25 2010, the New Zealand Parliament passed the Sentencing and Parole Reform Bill, also known as “Three Strikes” legislation, sponsored by David Garrett, the ACT Party, and the Sensible Sentencing Trust, and supported by the National Party, under Prime Minister John Key. The law imposes mandatory maximum sentences on offenders who commit three “Strike” offences, removing judicial discretion. An almost identical bill was passed in California in 1994. California’s crime rate remains 11% above the national average, its prison population has increased to nearly 200,000, and its recidivism rate is the highest in the United States.

  • Availability

Juliet Palmer  

Bout

Duration: 09' 00" Year: 2010
for chamber ensemble

  • Instrumentation
    for saxophone/bass clarinet, percussion, piano, electric guitar, violin and cello
  • Programme Note

    Bout is inspired by the sport of women’s boxing. In an interview with Canadian boxing pioneer Savoy “Kapow” Howe, I was struck by her detailed demonstration of the inner monologue of a fighter. Melodic and rhythmic material from her words insinuate themselves into the piece, along with referee’s whistles, counts and bells, training routines and the dogged persistence of the fighter.

    Bout: A round at fighting; a contest, match, trial of strength, physical or intellectual.

  • Availability

Mark Smythe  

De La Cuna que se Mece Eternamente

Duration: 06' 33" Year: 2010
for unaccompanied vocal ensamble

Alex Taylor  

eight pieces for wind quartet

Duration: 09' 00" Year: 2010
for wind quartet

  • Instrumentation
    for flute, oboe, clarinet and bassoon
  • Programme Note

    eight pieces for wind quartet was inspired by Ligeti’s extraordinary, dramatic work Ten Pieces for Wind Quintet, and my eight pieces uses this work as a model, where movements alternate between slow-moving, cloud-like textures and jittery, virtuosic interjections. The fragments of melody are constantly reaching outwards, the tense, at times nightmarish, harmonic language constantly straining, edging towards the elusive octave. Within the twelve-tone framework I wanted to create as much diversity and flexibility as possible, always keeping a tension between motion and stasis. Each piece is a kind of elaboration of the same melodic idea, a blueprint that is constructed differently each time, like seemingly unrelated episodes in a dream. Below is a short poem that I think embodies the miniature nature of each piece and the work as a whole.

    miniature

    if a dream came to you
    you might catch it, hold it,
    sculpt from it an elaborate

    memory, the husk of a rushed
    feeling, the miniature
    interior of a moment

    - alex taylor

  • Availability

Samuel Gray  

Ethnic Conflict for String Ensemble

Duration: 09' 30" Year: 2010
for 13 string players

  • Instrumentation
    for 13 string players (4,4,2,2,1) or for full string orchestra

    Extra chairs or stools: these need to be knocked over loudly, so they must be placed away from the musicians in such a way that they will not fall onto the musicians; 2-4 very cheap old violins and/or violas that can be smashed and destroyed (optional);

    Players' voices: the instrumentalists must be of both genders, as both male and females are required to scream and yell
  • Programme Note

    This work begins with two authentic folk melodies from two (European) ethnic groups that, most recently in 2008, were engaged in armed violence. The similarity of the melodies, and the fact that layman cannot tell the two melodies apart, highlights the fact that ethnic hatred requires group-internal discourses to be nourished and exacerbated.

    Violence between two or more groups of people that see each other as ‘the others’, continues to shape the lives of millions of people globally.
    Composer Samuel Gray has first-hand experience of ethnic violence as an independent volunteer in Kosovo. While Gray realises that is impossible to represent the suffering and terror of war and its emotional and societal aftermath in music and does not wish to belittle such experiences through this work, he believes that in order for contemporary classical music to continue play a role in modern society, it needs to not ignore the problems that modern society has to deal with.

  • Availability

Juliet Palmer  

How it Happened

Duration: 15' 00" Year: 2010
for narrator and ensemble

  • Instrumentation
    for bass clarinet in Bb, alto flute
    percussion — kick-drum, snare drum, low tom-tom, low woodblock, high woodblock, medium cowbell (muted), hi-hat, high ride cymbal, medium splash cymbal, thin metal sheet, cabasa, rainstick, tibetan bowl (F if possible), vibraphone, marimba;
    narrator — amplified with microphone and/or paper megaphone and power megaphone;
    piano (nylon fishing line rosined), violin and violoncello
  • Programme Note

    “In the beginning, there was nothing. Just the water.”
    “But where did all the water come from?”

    Throughout Thomas King’s novel the character of the trickster Coyote reappears, hopelessly bamboozled, trying to learn what really happened when the world began. Who knows the Real Story? Coyote would like to think he does, but then there’s Coyote’s Dream – “gets loose and runs around. Makes a lot of noise”. Coyote’s Dream has his own idea about things: “I’m in charge of the world”. By the end of the piece, you’ll be wondering where all that water came from…

  • Availability

Robbie Ellis  

If Zack de la Rocha were a twelve-tone serialist composer

Duration: 00' 30" Year: 2010
microscore for clarinet quartet