Impulses and Invention (2020/21)
for bass trombone, percussion and electronics // 17'
commissioned by the Ossicle Duo, made possible by the City of Melbourne.
This work is currently unavailable whilst reconstruction of the electronics part takes place, but for more information feel free to email me
Instrumentation
Bass trombone (ord, bucket, nasal mutes required)
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Percussion
Stockholm Syndrome -
Castanets
A garden near Eden -
Metal pipe tuned to an F
5 triangles
Invention -
2 triangles (small+med)
Xylophone
3 Woodblocks, 5 Templeblocks
A mix of 8 small metallic/wooden instruments
Performance history​
March 27 2021
Primrose Potter Salon, Melbourne Recital Centre
Ossicle Duo
Photo: Melbourne Recital Centre, Matt Laing
About
This piece had a few different iterations over a few years, and once the piece had conceptually been realised the COVID-19 pandemic made it unfeasible; collecting and transporting all the percussion became problematic, and rehearsing the work would have been illegal.
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This lead to reframing the work, using the material that was to be used but confining it to the practical realities of the time; the pieces themselves only exist in the form they do because of the limitations imposed on us by the pandemic. Across the 3 movement work I've limited the piece to small, transportable percussion; Stockholm Syndrome uses castanets only, a garden near Eden uses the recorded sounds of bellbirds in Barragga Bay, NSW (a place I wouldn't have been were it not for the pandemic) and uses triangles instead of tubular bells for the idiophonic sounds in the piece, and Invention uses a miscellany of 8 random instruments as a nod to making do with what you have, of freedoms within confined spaces.
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My thanks to Ossicle Duo for commissioning this work, their commitment to performing it in a difficult time, their patience while I ask stupid questions, and for recording much of what is heard in the electronics part.
This work was written for Ossicle Duo, and supported by the City of Melbourne COVID-19 Arts Grants.