Recitative based on Hunting Stories from Baron Münchausen opera.
Premiered by Isabel Soccoja (mezzo soprano) & ensemble Offrandes on July 11-12-13 at La Fonderie, Le Mans (fr).
Martin Moulin, direction - Stéphane Charlot, tenor saxophone - Olivier Mingam, violin - Samuel Boré, organ - Jean-Christophe Garnier, drums.
The piece is dedicated to Jacopo Baboni Schilingi.

WE'RE (IN) THE TEXT (2017) - for mezzo soprano & ensemble

Performed by Talea Ensemble; Jeffrey Means, conductor, DiMenna Center, New York, May 2017

the new normal for fixed media and ensemble

Music for Miniature Landscapes, for guitar quartet, was written in 2014 for the highSCORE festival in Pavia, Italy.

The piece uses statistically generated fields, superimposed onto simple algorithmic processes and the occasional 'compositional' intervention to create complex but intuitable textures and progressions - at least that is the intention!

The work is characterised by long parametric transformations that cause the music to move between states: dense texture to monody, obvious to incoherent and so on. However, these states differ only in terms of the magnitude of the variables used in their generation and do not exhibit any boundaries or transitions: any state changes, then, are phenomena which are imposed ‘from the outside’ by the listener, as are the details of exactly what they are and when they occur.

www.desmondclarke.com

Music For Miniature Landscapes

a snippet of a ritual hidden from the audience: slightly altered, very affected, flame grilled

Work Sets You Free? : Ode to Capitalist Pigs Oink Oink
For JVLMA Ensemble at the Crossroads International Contemporary Music Festival (Salzburg 2017)

Viola - Pēteris Trasuns
Clarinet - Guntis Kuzma 
Alto Sax - Arvydas Kazlauskas
Double Bass - Viktors Stankevičs

Work Sets You Free, is a work for Clarinet, Alto Sax, Viola and Double Bass. Written as a commentary on my own increasing concerns regarding the leaning of western capitalism towards fascism, most particularly in the US and UK. Conservative governments are for-fronted by leaders, who through deception and power manipulate democracy to reflect their own desires.  Capitalism is driven by the ideology that you get what you work for, the harder you work the more you’ll receive. But as it is, these establishments are becoming increasingly more corrupt, using the ‘American dream’ work ethic to fuel the one per cent and exclude the minorities. Using the idea of poor work ethic as a way to condemn those who do not fit into their own ideas, justifying xenophobia, anti-Semitism and homophobia. The power that these individuals have is incredibly concerning, frighteningly mirroring 1930’s Germany, targeting the vulnerable members of the country to fuel the parties’ own agendas. You only have to look at Trump and the wall he wants to build between America and Mexico to see the divide he is creating, not only socially but physically. 

“When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending the best. They’re not sending you, they’re sending people that have lots of problems and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bring crime. They’re rapists… And some, I assume, are good people.” (Donald Trump)

In light of this, Work Sets You Free explores this extra musical content by the use of pervasive driving rhythmic material that incessantly pulses with little direction. The use of folk idiom in contrast to aggressive material acts as a metaphor to freedom, this is further elaborated on by the satirical use of almost nationalistic sounding material in a comical manner. Once again referring to the parody I am suggesting on the level of freedom these ‘democratic’ countries have.

Work Sets You Free? : Ode to Capitalist Pigs Oink Oink - (2017)

Vinapa is one of the 84 Tantric Mahasiddhi. These figures all stand as testament of the multitude of ways one can become enlightened. I was drawn to Vinapa specifically because he is arguably the only figure to gain enlightenment through music. The quartet draws upon his approach to enlightenment and gives rise to the opportunity for the listener to try and follow the same path. 

Premiered by JVLMA Ensemble: Peteris Trasuns (viola), Viktors Stankevics (double bass), Guntis Kuzma (clarinet), Arvydas Kazlauskas (saxophone)

Premiered as part of Crossroads Festival 2017 in the Barockmuseum, Salzburg

Vinapa (2017)

Written in June - September 2017
Performed by Peter Sheppard Skærved at St. Vedast Foster Lane, London - 15.02.2018 

The piece revolves around a few cantabile melodic fragments, manifesting in two or even three voices at once, gradually intensifying and transforming into a soaring singing line at the very top register of the violin, until descending again. Soi in Finnish, means ‘rings’, ‘sounds’, ‘echoes’.

The piece was written for Peter Sheppard Skærved.
___
Recording courtesy of Colin Still (Optic Nerve Productions)
Photo by ©Malene Sheppard Skærved

Soi - for solo violin (2017)

Subsurface

LIVE @ VISUAL BULK  Dani Kirby/Mat Ward/Matt Warren

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on bandcamp:
https://isaacschankler.bandcamp.com/track/the-moonlight-sonata-but-the-bass-is-a-bar-late-and-the-melody-is-a-bar-early

sheet music:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/22sq0p19lundped/moonlate12102018.pdf?dl=0

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The Moonlight Sonata but the bass is a bar late and the melody is a bar early

For 6 Electric Guitars, 6 Acoustic Guitars and 2 Acoustic Bass Guitars

Awarded 1st prize for the “Pablo Wendel – Performance Electrics” International Composition Competition in 2013.

Conducted by Helmut Oesterreich and performed by Open Source Guitars. Recorded live in Musichochschule Trossingen, Germany in April 2013.

Marshes - Performed by Helmut Oesterriech and OSG

Composer currently studying at the University of York.

Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/catherinerobsoncomposer/
Website - http://www.catherinerobsoncomposer.co.uk/

Work Sets You Free? : Ode to Capitalist Pigs Oink Oink - (2017)

Catherine Robson

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