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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

Alex Taylor  

figments

Duration: 07' 00" Year: 2012
for mixed chamber sextet

  • Instrumentation
    flute/alto flute, Bb clarinet, bass clarinet, bass trombone, cello, double bass
  • Programme Note

    “Do or do not; there is no try.” – Yoda

    figments represents a series of “tries”: attempts to remember, recast and reconfigure an earlier work, also called figments, that was lost or destroyed early in 2012. The only surviving material of the original is contained in a small number of photographs taken while composing. These photographs offered triggers for building up material in a non-linear fashion, a collage of moments.

    In this new work, every so often a cohesive narrative emerges, but equally often the train of thought is obscured or lost, only to be taken up again, remembered differently or approached from a new angle. The task of completion and reconciliation of competing and conflicting materials is eventually abandoned, leaving tangents to integrate and disintegrate freely, the initial goals perhaps concealed or missed in the remembering.

    To me, “do or do not” is an oversimplification bordering on authoritarianism; “trying”, while transient and rich with flaw and slippage, is the only tangible and realistic form of action here.

  • 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

Michael Norris  

Save Yourself

Duration: 12' 00" Year: 2012
for chamber ensemble

  • Instrumentation
    flute, clarinet, accordion, synth, violin, cello
  • Programme Note

    Save Yourself is a further development of my preoccupation with sonic analogues to visual stimuli. In this work, I imagine a series of monohued “colour fields” which have been overwritten with surface figurations and gestures.

    The accordion and melodicas provide the cyclical progression of harmonic fields—subtly coloured by gliding sine tones—whilst the winds and strings provide the aggressive gestural activity. The contrapuntal, textural writing gradually decays into more syncronized figures towards the end of the piece, whilst at the same time developing the noise-based timbres from the very opening.

  • Availability

Alex Taylor  

thirteen ways of looking at a blackbird

Duration: 20' 00" Year: 2010
a song cycle for countertenor, clarinet in B flat, 2 violins, viola and cello