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solo clarinet

In many ways this is a companion piece to an earlier work, Vivid for solo trumpet, which also sets a powerful, sexually charged poem by Will Christie. But where Vivid is very often overtly violent and forceful in its gestures, deepwalker is mostly much subtler, almost passive-aggressive in outlook. The opening lines of the poem – “the day is a drum that connects these vocal loops with grey traffic circles bridge after bridge” – are mirrored in the cyclical, sometimes elliptical form of the work, loops and circles that play between registers of the clarinet. Sexual tension and aggression bubble away in the background, periodically rupturing the musical surface with piercing, angular outbursts, sometimes in parallel with the rather tender, fluid lines of the low register, and with the spoken text itself. This violent interplay creates a kind of disordered internal conversation, a bizarre hermetic character opening and shutting her windows; a clarinet of many voices.

Warning: contains coarse language

• Taylor: deepwalker; computer set 

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• Taylor: deepwalker; computer set 

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• Alex Taylor: deepwalker; audio 

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• Alex Taylor: deepwalker 

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flexible instrumentation up to 3333; 4331; 3perc, timp, piano, harp; strings

Earthquake: 22.2.11 began as a project after the September 2010 earthquakes struck Christchurch and surrounding districts. I was interested in capturing the peculiar sonic properties of the earthquakes – the unnatural preparatory calm, the low pitched boom, the change in air pressure, the accelerating rhythms, the creaks, the rattles, the cracks, the climactic shuddering of the building one was in, the decay of sound, and the silence before the cacophonous response of voices, alarms, telephones, sirens, police cars, ambulances, fire trucks and helicopters.

I successfully applied for Creative New Zealand funding to compose such a work for the Christchurch Symphony Orchestra and set to work late in 2010.

The earthquakes hadn’t finished though. On February 22, 2011, in New Zealand’s worst natural disaster since the 1931 Napier earthquake, a 7.2 earthquake centred on Christchurch killed 185 people and caused inestimable damage to the city’s buildings and infrastructure. Composing a dispassionate response was no longer appropriate; indeed, composing anything at all about the event seemed wrong, almost exploitative, in the face of the human tragedy.

I stumbled upon Gary McCormick’s poem Earthquake 22.2.11 shortly after he wrote it as a white-hot response to the devastation. I empathised with his anger and his railing at the randomness of the event. Even so, it took almost a year before I felt ready to set Gary’s poem to music. The catalyst was a further round of earthquakes beginning on 23 December 2011, in which further damage, including the destruction of our previous home, a beautiful Victorian dwelling I had helped restore in the 1990s, occurred to the city. Something like 10 quakes of magnitude 5 or more occurred while I was composing the score.

• Norman: Earthquake: 22.2.11; computer set 

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• Norman: Earthquake: 22.2.11; computer set 

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• Philip Norman: Earthquake (demo); audio 

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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

“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…

• Palmer: How it Happened; computer set 

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• Palmer: How it Happened; computer set 

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• Palmer: How it Happened; computer set 

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• Juliet Palmer: How it Happened 

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“In the Classroom” was inspired by what I call the ‘21st century classroom’ which is mostly comprised of laptops and the sound of typing with the occasional manic scribbling of the old fashioned pencil: The piece focuses on the percussive sounds of typing and gestural sounds of scribbling, and how one can lose their concentration for this very reason. The irony behind the piece is that the idea was conceived during a music lecture in which I simply could not concentrate on the lecture about music, but instead the music that was happening all around me. Texture provides the basic layer of the piece but within this texture, rhythms are brought out to draw attention to the musicality of classroom noises.
—Briar Prastiti

• Briar Prastiti: In The Classroom - downloadable mp3 

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for violin, cello, piano, chhing bowl, narrator, soprano, khloy, drums, paipork, sneng

Cambodia’s long, chequered history spans the vibrant, ancient Khmer culture to the country’s hopeful, modern aspect, but is overshadowed by the devastation of the Pol Pot regime. More than 1.7 million people perished through starvation, disease, overwork and execution, including most of the country’s artists and intellectuals. Now a widespread effort has been made to preserve the country’s 1,000-year-old arts, which were on the brink of extinction.

Cambodia’s tragic recent history provides the inspiration for O Cambodia.

• Body: O Cambodia; computer-set 

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• NZTrio & Tray So: O Cambodia CD  Year: 2012 

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Javanese rebab, slenthem (pelog), gambang (slendro), sound technician(s)

Shifting Shadows (2012) is inspired by Stockhausen’s Mikrophonie 1 (1964), in which the sounds of a tam-tam are manipulated in real time by the movement of hand-held microphones and through electronic filtering and diffusion of the amplified sound.

In my work three traditional Javanese gamelan instruments – gambang (xylophone), slenthem (metalophone), and rebab (spiked fiddle) – are activated by an array of household materials to generate sounds. In live performance I intend for additional ‘players’ to create other layers of sound using a microphone as a musical instrument. The recording attempts to convey this layering of sound.

The character of Shifting Shadows was inspired by the idea of the ‘familiar spirit’, which in old European folklore is a supernatural entity, sometimes taking the form of an animal or human figure, to assist witches and other cunning folk. The sounds used in Shifting Shadows are eerie, intimate and gestural, giving the impression of an unknown creature.

• Briar Prastiti: Shifting Shadows - hardcopy score 

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• Briar Prastiti: Shifting Shadows - downloadable PDF 

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• Shifting Shadows - audio CD 

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Piccolo, Flute, Oboe, Cor Anglais, Bb Clarinet, Bass Clarinet, Bassoon, Contra-bassoon, 4 Horns in F, 3 Trumpets, two Trombones, Bass Trombone, Tuba, Timpani, Vibraphone, Congas, Snare Drum, Harp, Narrator, Strings.

The story of “The Radish and the Shoe” was created by French Canadian artist Louise Jalbert and set to music by Andrew Perkins. Jalbert’s book won the Parents’ Choice Award when it was first published in California in 1984 and has since been republished. The characters, a Radish, a Shoe and a group of Letters, all reside inside a book which they call their home. One day a pair of scissors attacks the book, destroying the characters’ home, leaving them completely despondent. However, they pick themselves up and repair their book, and in the process inadvertently transform their ‘home’ into something more beautiful than before. The story is cleverly analogous with survival in the real world and one that has always rung resonances with the philosophical approach to life Andrew Perkins has always attempted to instill in his students.

• Perkins: The Radish and the Shoe; computer set 

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• Perkins: The Radish and the Shoe; computer set 

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• Andrew Perkins: The Radish and the Shoe 

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for violin, cello, piano, chhing bowl, narrator, soprano, khloy, drums, paipork and sneng

There is a Cambodian proverb – “the rowing boat passes, the river bank remains” – which to me suggests that isolated events in history, or in a person’s life, eventually pass, while history, or life itself, flows on. Within the O CAMBODIA project, I wanted to present a narrative which moves on from the Khmer Rouge times into the future, moving from the hard times that affected every Cambodian who is now over 35, into a profoundly altered world.

The first section of the river flows on… is Prophecy, which presents an ancient saying whose source is not remembered today. The second section, Sokha’s Story, tells the story of Sokha Mey, who currently lives and works in Wellington. She was a young girl living with her family in a small village near Siem Reap when Lon Nol’s forces were defeated and the Khmer Rogue came to power. The final section, “the river flows on…” places Sokha’s story into the future, where she was able to make a new life for herself in New Zealand.

I would like to thank Niborom Young, Sokun Chiv and particularly Sokha Mey for their invaluable help.

- CD notes from Atoll CD “O CAMBODIA” (see under ‘Availability’)

• NZTrio & Tray So: O Cambodia CD  Year: 2012 

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Having heard Adrianna Lis in concert, I was excited by the prospect of writing for her and was thrilled to contribute a piece for her CD Dialogue/Rozmowa produced by Atoll Records. We discovered in subsequent conversations that we shared a common interest in WWII history and decided there and then that this should be the central idea. The horrors of WWII remain very much part of the Polish collective memory. Like many of her countrymen Adrianna does not wish for the events of WWII, and in particular the treatment of the Polish people, to be forgotten or diluted by time, thereby diminishing the significance. When we Fell is a reflection of this idea. A fall from grace; a fall from humanity; a falling away from oneself. I have tried to imbue in this piece a sense of nostalgia, a hint of the military and in parts childlike innocence that in a strange way highlights the dismay at the loss of humility. The folk-like melody that runs through is an adaptation of the Polish song To Ostatnia Niedziela composed by Jerzy Petersburski (1936) – a nostalgic tango describing the final meeting of former loves who are parting, which had the dubious honor of often being poled while Jewish prisoners were led to their deaths in the gas chambers. The vocal track is recording of some of the text from this song but toward the end a passage from Nietzsche’s Thus Spake Zarathustra is quoted in Polish.

Michael Williams

• Michael Williams: When We Fell - downloadable electroacoustic part (mp3) 

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• Michael Williams: When We Fell - hardcopy score & electroacoustic part (CD) 

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• Michael Williams: When We Fell - downloadable PDF 

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• Adrianna Lis: Rozmowa / Dialogue  Year: 2012 

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