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‘Baxter Songs’ is a setting of three poems by James K Baxter. The three poems are ‘High Country Weather’, ‘Let time be still’ and an extract from ‘Stephanie’. The first two poems were composed early in the poets career and express his more romantic sentiments. When I hear these poems, I think of Baxter as a young poet in the South Island (Otago and Canterbury universities) exploring the Otago hinterland. I think, too, of the early days of his relationship with Jacqui Sturm and imagine the two of them exploring the hills and mountains. The extract from ‘Stephanie’ is from much later in Baxter’s life. He is older now and life has had its way with Baxter (or perhaps the other way around?). The poem follows a family tragedy and there is a sense of heartbreak in the voice.

• Royal: Baxter Songs; computer set 

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• Royal: Baxter Songs; computer set 

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• Charles Royal: Baxter Songs; video 

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This work is an exploration of the possibilities of the string orchestra as a body of sound, the orchestra at times acting like one giant super-instrument composed of intricately superimposed layers. Old textures are continually swallowed up, recycled and transformed, playing out a finely balanced tension between static and active, supple and brittle, strong and fragile. From a fluid, tangled haze, individual voices periodically emerge to assert some kind of nostalgic lyricism, but each time they are ultimately subsumed, swallowed up in an eerie, ambivalent mass of sound. Stylistically the music is varied and eclectic, weaving together the intricate, spidery lines of Ligeti, the delicate chordal sonorities of Messiaen, the caustic anger of Shostakovich and even the brooding menace of Anthony Watson.

• Taylor: silk / gravel; computer-set 

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• Taylor: silk / gravel; computer-set 

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• Taylor: silk / gravel; computer-set 

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• Alex Taylor: silk / gravel; audio 

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