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David Downes  

Bliss Mechanism

Duration: 10' 00" Year: 2009
for clarinet, piano, and small ensemble

Juliet Palmer  

Deep Stew

Duration: 10' 00" Year: 1997
arrangement of 1994 work for alto flute, violin, cello, double bass, bass clarinet, drum kit and Hammond organ

  • Instrumentation
    strings to be electrified; drum kit: 2 tom-toms, bass drum, hi-hat, muted cowbell, sizzle cymbal. Hammond organ can be substituted by keyboard with Hammond B40 sample.
  • Programme Note

    “Have you ever lost your mouth or anything in that small area… your lips, your teeth, your tongue, your tonsils? The throat … everything around there. You’d be in deep stew, yes. … " Patti Labelle, Moon Shadow

    Listening to the Hammond-centred sound of the Peddlers in my parents’ car in 1974, I’d feel positively queasy. Ransacking my Dad’s cassette collection a few years, I stumbled across some of this old ‘driving music’. Somehow I no longer felt nauseous when I listened to it. Around the same time I bought my brother a collection of Rare Groove for his 30th birthday. One of the stand-out tracks is of Patti Labelle singing her version of Cat Stevens’ Moonshadow. The central section is an insanely long rant by Labelle in which each of the musicians solo (including a fabulous Hammond improv). Deep Stew takes it title and its spirit from this crazy sequence of what if’s.

    Commissioned by the Composers’ Association of New Zealand with funds from the QEII Arts Council, Deep Stew was premiered in 1994 at Wellington Town Hall, New Zealand and revised in 1997. The Bang on a Can All-Stars gave the work its American premiere in 1995 at New York’s Lincoln Center.

    The current arrangement (1997) is a new revised version written especially for the California EAR Unit.

  • Availability

Juliet Palmer  

Foundry

Duration: 11' 00" Year: 2004
for chamber septet

  • Instrumentation
    alto flute/flute/piccolo, clarinet/bass clarinet, horn, trombone, piano/celesta, violin, cello
  • Programme Note

    This piece is a musical foundry. My focus is on metal: sawn, hammered, melted, poured, moulded, cast, polished… The melodic material is based on pitch analyses of the sounds of drilling, hammering and sawing. I want to melt the material down to a metallic gleam. Foundry was commissioned by Continuum with funds from the Laidlaw Foundation.

  • Availability

Jack Body  

Interior

Duration: 13' 00" Year: 1987
for chamber septet and tape

  • Instrumentation
    flute, violin, clarinet, cello, piano, synthesiser, percussion and tape
  • Programme Note

    In 1987 the composer visited China and searched out the music of some of China’s so-called minority peoples. Field records made on this visit form the core of the work: the instrumental writing is mean as an enchancing backdrop to direct our listening to the ‘interior’ of the music.
    First is heard to long-ge, a three-bladed Jews harp of the Yi nationality (Sichuan province). Next three women of the Miao nationality (Guizhou province) sing a melody of strong character with long notes and leaping intervals further enhanced by the gradual melting into a unison. The words mean “though we die, our songs like mountains, go on forever”. Finally we hear an ensemble of lusheng played by youths of the Ge nationality (Guizhou province) accompanying a dance. This six-piped bamboo mouth organ is common in the south of China and is found in various forms throughout Laos, Cambodia, Thailand and parts of Indonesia.

    Notes taken from Ritual Auras, Atoll CD (ACD 842)

  • Availability

Robin Toan  

Le Marteau du Destin

Duration: 10' 00" Year: 2006
for chamber septet

  • Instrumentation
    B flat clarinet, C trumpet, voice, violin, cello, percussion, piano
  • Programme Note

    Le Marteau du Destin is a collection of haiku set for female voice with chamber ensemble. It is in five movements. The texts were taken from Japanese poets and were chosen because of their association with nature.

    “Before this autumn wind/ Even the shadows of mountains/ Shudder and tremble”-Issa

    “When I went out/ In the spring meadows/ To gather violets, I enjoyed myself/ So much that I stayed all night” – Akahito

    “The long, long river/ A single line/ On the snowy plain” – Boncho

    “Gathering wild strawberries/ My humble treat” – Basho

    “O autumn winds,/ Tell me where I’m bound, to which/particular hell” – Issa

  • Availability

Chris Cree Brown  

Memories Apart

Duration: 12' 00" Year: 2001
for chamber ensemble

  • Instrumentation
    for flute, clarinet (doubling E flat, A and bass), bass clarinet, bass trombone, percussion, cello and double bass
  • Programme Note

    Early in 2001, I was elated at the arrival of my first child, George. Observing him grow and develop in the last 6 months has rekindled the vague memories and nebulous feelings from my own early life, and has prompted me to wonder what memories, feelings, sights and smells etc he will remember in years to come. I am sure that these musings are not new and have occurred millions of times for many millennia, but I have still found them rather special. Perhaps the slower parts of the piece portray a nostalgic and retrospective perspective, and perhaps the faster gestures depict some animated conversations as heard by a newborn.

  • Availability

Chris Watson  

Nacelle

Duration: 10' 00" Year: 2003
concerto for B flat clarinet and ensemble

  • Instrumentation
    for B flat clarinet and ensemble of flute, bass clarinet, horn, bass trombone, cello and double bass
  • Programme Note

    The nacelle is the main body of the top portion of a modern wind turbine, an enclosure housing an electrical generator, power control equipment, disc brakes and a gearbox. Rotating on its tower to constantly face the prevailing breeze and responding to wind force by setting thresholds for propeller speed, the nacelle is the brains of the operation. Nacelle continues my exploration of metric modulation and its relation to the movement and behaviour of machines, though with the added element of a soloist, who steers the music’s path through different tempi as well as defining the direction of the music’s texture and language; the soloist is the brains of the operation. Two cadenzas allow for an escape from the rigours of the metric scheme, where a subjective take on the timing of proceedings is permitted.

    In 2003 I lived close to Wellington’s wind turbine and indulged in regular walks to the landmark.

    Nacelle was performed in Christchurch, Wellington and Auckland by 175 East in April and May of 2003 with solo clarinetist Gretchen Dunsmore.

  • Availability

Juliet Palmer  

Skirt

Duration: 12' 00" Year: 1992
for flute (doubling piccolo), clarinet (doubling bass clarinet), percussion, piano, violin, viola and cello

  • Programme Note

    Fragmentary recollections of beginnings… Miro’s Ladder of Escape: opaque clouds of colour shift enigmatically, lines moving in the foreground with muscular vigour. Brooklyn: walking down my street, summertime, big American cars pulse by me with big stereo sounds. Metal muscle. Travels in Hyperreality: Umberto Eco writes about the transforning effect of wearing jeans on one’s consciousness. Skirt: the edge of things, it is what it does, a feisty/frilly word.

  • Availability

John Rimmer  

The Ripple Effect

Duration: 11' 00" Year: 1995
for violin, cello, horn, flute (doubling piccolo), clarinet in B flat, piano and percussion with a prominent horn part

  • Programme Note

    The Ripple Effect

    In this work one instrument, the horn, gradually triggers musical turbulences and dominates the ensemble. Consequently the music becomes increasingly virtuosic. The calm mood of the beginning is transformed into rhythmic and flamboyant textures as the ‘ripple effect’ grows and takes over.

    The Ripple Effect was composed in 1995 and received its first performance in October 1996 at the Music Theatre, University of Auckland by the Karlheinz Company conducted by John Elmsly.

  • Availability

Neville Hall  

the way time accumulates

Duration: 13' 00" Year: 1993
for chamber septet