Mikrokonzert: I Swear I Saw the Sun Falling
For a while now, I have been interested in the edges of things: where things start and stop being, where they vanish, where one idea bleeds into another. This piece attempts to combine found sounds and streams of 'noise' that we carry with us in the background of our lives - radios, pop music, conversations, remembered places - only occasionally gliding into focus as we pass by an open door, with a more 'abstract' musical discourse. Far from going on a nostalgia trip, I want to examine the way we remember, the way we share our experiences and how every sound we will ever hear will be imbued with connections we ourselves may not be able to verbalise. The creative act seems to me to be a constant re-evaluation and processing of all our absorbed experiences, reconfiguring these into a musical constellation. We cannot, and should not want to, escape our myriad ties to history and to each other, nor should we embrace these blindly, but always go on thinking, thinking and rethinking.
The cello part of Mikrokonzert was written for Alice Purton. It will be performed by new music ensemble Vaganza on 16th May 2010 at the York Spring Festival of New Music and on 8th June 2010 at the RNCM.
Duration: approx. 5'
Instrumentation: solo cello, percussion (2 players), piano (4 hands), vln, vla, fl, voice, electronics.
