Shadow, and the Moon (2009)

For flute, clarinet, violin, cello, marimba and piano | Dedicated to Errollyn Wallen. Duration – 12:00.

‘shadow and the moon’ was composed in 2009. This is the live premiere recording from St. Peter’s Church, Bournemouth in May 2011. The recording is a little boomy and has coughs and noises from the audience.

Like many of my recent works, ‘shadow, and the moon’ was conceived by recycling existing musical material and reorganising the content through changing contexts and relationships, transforming the music into something quite new; in this case, instrumental layers from ‘soft geometry’ and ‘strange geometry’, both trios for flute, cello and piano and both works similarly connected to each other through their material.
I am fascinated how altered contexts can radically redefine the way musical material feels and sounds. Transplanting different layers, voices or strands of music from one piece to another, altering tempi and dynamics, instrumentation, transposing, inverting, and then letting those strands sound-out together; all of these methods fascinate me and can be found here along with newly composed music. The recycling of material ensures that there is a ‘genetic’ connection between all my music. These pieces are like sons and daughters; cousins, five times removed. With this ‘genetic’ material comes history, characteristics and content. In music, as with people, the way this genetic material is ‘lived out’ determines the character and make-up of the person or piece. This can lead to very individual outcomes.

‘shadow, and the moon’ is dedicated to my dear friend Errollyn Wallen who was present at the premiere.

Premiered by Kokoro, conducted by Mark Forkgen at St. Peter’s Church, Bournemouth
on the 14th May 2011.

Recording made possible with the kind assistance of PVA MediaLab, Bridport.

Note: Due to an upgrade in computer systems some years ago, this work is awaiting reformatting and is currently unavailable. Please use the contact page to request further information.