Work

Napier's Bones

1989

for 24 percussionists and improvising jazz piano
By:
- Gillian Whitehead

Duration:: 35' 00"
Instrumentation:: also in a version for 6 perc and improvising piano

Programme Note

For improvising piano and percussion, Napier’s Bones was written for the outstanding improvising pianist Judy Bailey and exists in two formats – one involving 24 percussionists and the other involving 6 virtuoso percussionists.

“The New Zealand work which evoked a similarly strong reaction was Gillian Whitehead’s Napier’s Bones whose protracted time-frame of beautifully controlled percussive and pianistic gestures was music from another sphere – an utterly compelling experience of the type I am always looking for in contemporary music.” (de Castro-Robinson).

Commissioned:

Commissioned by Judy Bailey with funding assistance from the Australia Council