Work
Napier's Bones
for 24 percussionists and improvising jazz piano
About
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).