20 June 2009

A Fresh Scent of Maybe

“Tight, finely wrought” are the descriptors which have recently been applied to both Fragments of « Morning Has Broken » & Radiant Maples. and we are all enjoying ourselves in working the pieces up. The composer is well pleased; and occasion may possibly be found to make use of the pieces in a service at First Church, early in September.

It’s now some four years since the Squibnocket Trio played my trio (cl/bn/pf) Hurricane Relief; I am still in sporadic touch with the bassoonist, Dave Gallagher, who advises me this week that he has formed a woodwind quintet — so naturally I ask if I might write something for them. Replies he, Have you written anything for WW 5tet already?? Let me sound the group out, I think it would be worth a shot.

Naturally, I had to return that I have nothing yet in the catalogue for quintet, but . . . a piece for woodwind quintet and piano. Happily, he volleys back with We’re doing a WW 5tet + piano program in November – featuring Poulenc and Jacob 6tets. We’ve been playing a short WW 5tet piece for an opener…how long is your 6tet??

My own sextet, Counting Sheep (or, The Dreamy Abacus of Don Quijote) is the other piece (besides Radiant Maples) which I composed late in 2001, but which has languished on the shelf unperformed, even though at the time, it was composed to fulfill a musical request.

So, we watch & wait: the Abacus’s time may at last have come.

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