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Michael Norris  

14 Islands

Duration: 10' 00" Year: 2005
for flute/bass flute, percussion, and prepared harp

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Neville Hall  

and the snow's lace is spread there like sea foam

Duration: 13' 00" Year: 2001
for mixed chamber sextet

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  • Instrumentation
    flute, clarinet, bass clarinet, bass trombone, cello and bass
  • Programme Note

    There are two main forces shaping this work, which could be thought of as an “internal” force and an “external” force. The internal force is a process of growth that begins with a complex event heard towards the end of the composition. Variations of this event fan out in all directions across the work’s temporal space, ensuring that every event has a relationship, however distant, to every other event. The detailed crafting of each event, with its constant microscopic fluctuations in pitch and timbre, reflects the detailed activity in a spectral analysis of the title of the piece, a line from one of Ezra Pound’s ‘Cantos’. This analysis is expanded to have the same duration as the composition, so that the entire work is, on one level, an elaboration of a few seconds of spectral activity. The harmonic content of the spectrum is not, however, reflected in this rendering, but rather the morphology, with its evocative twistings, compressions and expansions. The harmonic organisation forms a third structural layer. It originates in the first five odd numbered partials of the natural harmonic series, built on the log ‘G’, an octave below the bass clef. Each partial forms the centre of a narrow band of pitches, from which the “melodic” material is drawn. Ultimately, however, the resulting contrapuntal writing is largely submerged in the surface timbral activity, as the other two structural layers tear at and distort its fabric.

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Ross Harris  

At the Edge of Silence

Duration: 11' 00" Year: 2003
quintet for flute, clarinet, violin, cello and piano

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John Rimmer  

Au

Duration: 13' 00" Year: 2002
concerto for bass clarinet and ensemble

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  • Instrumentation
    Flute doubling alto flute; clarinet doubling bass clarinet; horn; bass trombone; percussion (3 tom toms, 2 bongos, 2 suspended cymbals, crotales, vibraphone, bell tree); cello; double bass and bass clarinet solo
  • Programme Note

    Au began as a series of musical reflections on the Auroroa with pitch material based on the name of bass clarinettist Andrew Uren whose initials provide the title. This title, ‘Au’ is also the abbreviation for ‘aurum’, the Latin word for gold. As I was composing I realised that I was dealing with golden qualities not only of the sounds in the piece but also of the musicians in the ensemble 175 East who would be giving its first performance. This was particularly the case with the soloist Andrew Uren whose adventurous bass clarinet playing has revolutionised the way in which composers in New Zealand think about the instrument.

    The work was commissioned by Andrew Uren with funding provided by Creative New Zealand and was first performed on 15 September 2002 at The Space, Wellington, by Andrew Uren and ‘175 East’ conducted by Hamish McKeich.

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Michael Norris  

blindsight

Duration: 11' 00" Year: 2008
for mixed chamber quintet

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  • Instrumentation
    flute, clarinet, piano, violin and cello
  • Programme Note

    Human beings have a fragile relationship with reality: our beliefs are formed from a disordered stream of sensory impressions that flood our synapses. Although our brain is normally very good at packaging this into something that can get us through the day, certain pathological circumstances reveal the tenuous nature of reality. Blindsight is a condition in which a patient cannot “see” visual stimuli, and yet their body instinctively senses and reacts to them. This suggested a musical image: the two winds recite simple chordal gestures, which the strings reflect through a distorting mirror — “sensing” without “seeing”. The piano acts as an intensifying agent, sending flurrying signals down tangled pathways, and releasing static charges through the system.

    blindsight was written for the Pierrot Lunaire Ensemble Vienna, as part of the Sammlung Essl Music Series 2009.

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Chris Adams  

Contemporary Triptych

Duration: 10' 00" Year: 2011
for flute, bassoon and piano

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Juliet Palmer  

Deep Stew

Duration: 10' 00" Year: 1994
for electric violin, bass clarinet, Hammond organ and drum kit

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  • 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. The Bang on a Can All-Stars gave the work its American premiere in 1995 at New York’s Lincoln Center.

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David Hamilton  

Hurdy Gurdy

Duration: 10' 00" Year: 1989
for flute, clarinet, violin and piano

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Jack Body  

Interior

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

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  • 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)

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Gareth Farr  

Kembang Suling

Duration: 10' 00" Year: 1995
for flute and marimba

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  • Programme Note

    I – On the magical island of Bali, flowing gamelan melodies intertwine with the sound of the “suling” (Balinese bamboo flute) to form rich colourful tapestries. The marimba and flute start out as one, their sounds indistinguishable. Bit by bit the flute asserts its independence, straying further and further from the marimba melody. An argument ensues – but all is resolved at the climax.


    II – The haunting sounds of the Japanese “shakuhachi” flute float out over the warm echoes of the rolling landscape.

    III – Complex rhythms and South Indian scales set the two instruments off in a race to see who can outplay the other. The marimba is set in a three bar cycle of 5/4 + 5/8 + 5/6 but the flute plays a different cross rhythm each time, returning to the marimba’s pattern at the end of every cycle.


    from Tangaroa – Trust Records

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