Review of Shorelines
Composers Notes
Green Phoenix on Yellow Ground
Commissioned by the AAO with the assistance of the Australia Council for the Arts, 1995. Premiére, Wangaratta Festival of Jazz, 1995
Green Phoenix on Yellow Ground has been written by layering cyclic melodies and working with the harmonic framework that is a consequence of this. It starts with an ostinato of clustered tam tam samples and further in provides a showcase for piano and trumpet followed by a slightly funky exchange between samples and guitar. The inspiration for the title came from a piece of Chinese pottery in the National Palace Museum in Taiwan, which I saw while on tour with Clarion Fracture Zone in 1995.
– Alister Spence
concerto
Commissioned by the Australian Art Orchestra 1994
Premiére, Brisbane Biennial 1995.
Featured soloist, Michael Kieran Harvey, piano.
My concerto is, (a) a 12-number series which governs parameters of rhythm, especially harmonic rhythm (ie, rate of harmonic change) and the subdivision of beats, and (b) two contrasting melodies: one raucously announced by the band over the colliding rhythms of the pianist and his de-tuned alter-ego at the sampler, and one meditatively unveiled by the soloist at the conclusion of the first short ‘development’.
Conceptually, it is concerned with the notion of Eb Major as an ‘heroic’ chord and the idea of the piano as an instrument of fixed pitch, a concept which has dominated world music during the imperialist era. The soloist begins by building up a dense texture in dialogue with tom-toms and marimba, the band then joyously establishing Eb Major as a slogan rather than a tonal centre. The first theme is revealed over an unstable churning of tunings. It is then subjected to a metrical deconstruction in the form of a ‘solo’ in the jazz sense, with rhythm section.
After a brief return of the Eb idea, the second theme is introduced, then examined. Other instruments provide a commentary, and a slow build-up featuring cross-rhythms, a ghostly de-tuned reminder of the second theme and an improvised trumpet solo lead to the bacchanalian final section, in which all themes and ideas are stacked together, with the improvised tenor saxophone reminding us of the freedom which threatens to destroy all structure, no matter how rigorous. (!)
– Paul Grabowsky
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