EDGES is inspired by several events in my life over the period of 1995-97.  Two are near-death experiences, while the third is the sudden passing of one of my closest colleagues and best friends, Professor Robert Cooper.  

The first movement, "BACK FROM THE EDGE", is a chronicle of the battle that I waged with "flesh-eating strep", which nearly cost me my life in spring, 1995.  A fragment of a line from French playwright Jean Genet’s “Prisoner of Love” served as additional inspiration: 

 “perhaps all music, even the newest, is not so much something discovered as something that re-emerges from where it lay in memory, inaudible as a melody cut in a disc of flesh.  A composer lets me hear a song that has always been shut up silent within me.”

In a sense, my life has re-emerged from where it lay, for a while, silent, in memory.

Movement II, "POSTCARDS", is inspired by my mentor and friend, composer Donald Erb, who had his own near-death experience about a year later in the same Ithaca, New York hospital (a bizarre coincidence).  I know that he shared many of the mental aberrations I experienced during the recovery process, and POSTCARDS reflects the strange visions, the elusive but more and more frequent moments of clarity, and the eventual return to reality that such experiences create.  For me, in retrospect, these thoughts were like vivid postcards of other realities, sent to me by another part of my mind and filtered through the pain, the fear, and the medications that I had been given.  There was also a highly obsessive quality to my thoughts during the reco-very, which is reflected in the primary melodic material which simply refuses to disappear, though it changes colors, dynamics, and tempos at every turn.

Postcards -- real postcards, that is -- also played a role in my experiences.  While recovering, I received a post card (often of questionable taste) every two or three days from Don.  When it was his turn to be in recovery, it was my turn to send him postcards (equally questionable)...they seem now to me to be a lifeline to reality from people who are eager to welcome us back.

A quote was inspirational for this second movement as well, this time from Hermann Hesse’s Damien:

“In each individual the spirit is made flesh, in each one the whole of creation suffers, in each one a Savior is crucified.”

The final movement is a reflection on the amazing, wonderful, and sometimes difficult life of my colleague, Robert Cooper.  Robert had, without a doubt, the speediest metabolism of anyone I have ever known.  Lunch with Robert could be defined as both of us eating for the first five minutes and Robert watching me finish eating for the last 45.  Robert had two computers in his office and a phone; often all three were busy at once, while he carried on at least one additional conversation with whomever was present.  Yet Robert had great depth too.  He was a living example to students and colleagues, especially in facing life’s travails with courage and conviction.  He was also funny as hell.  I suppose that Robert’s pace was impossible to sustain, and in fact he died suddenly at age 45 on September 18, 1997. 

No quotations needed with this movement.  This one’s for you, man.


EDGES Movement I Back from the Edge for wind ensemble

In the late 1960s and early 70s I was a devotee of rock ‘n’ roll, especially groups that took the genre into individual virtuosity and into creative extensions of the medium.  Over the last 25 years I’ve infused some elements of rock into my contemporary concert music, but have not wholeheartedly returned to my pre-music-school roots…until this piece.  When Paul Dresher asked me to write something for the ElectroAcoustic Band, in addition to being delighted to work with these exceptional musicians, I also could see the possibility of taking “Progressive Rock” as the basis of a new kind of fusion, extending rock in ways that are unique to my ear.  I decided to start with the things about Progressive Rock that were near and dear to me, such as Emerson, Lake, and Palmer’s fusion with classical music, the extended harmonies, asymmetrical meters, free forms, and contrapuntal treatments of groups like Utopia, and the spontaneity of the more improvisation -based ensembles like the Grateful Dead.   Two groups in particular were extremely important to my path into music as a life-long passion:  there are brief homages to tunes from Yes (Fragile)and the Mahavishnu Orchestra (Birds of Fire) that figure prominently in the melange of the final section.  To these re-contextualizations I’ve added harmonies that are more commonly associated with jazz, tighter control of the ensemble, more variety in repetition, further extension of harmony and texture, and my own sense of timing and flow.  And of course the ensemble itself, with its inclusion of violin, clarinet and mallets, extends the basic timbres of rock ‘n’ roll.  The result is, I hope, a wholly integrated fusion of rock, jazz, and contemporary classical idioms, textures and timbres – one that lives comfortably among all these worlds.

The title “Fusebox” seemed appropriate in several ways.  First, it captures the electricity of the medium and of this ensemble.  Second, the piece is a multi-faceted fusion of several disparate musics (“whole lotta fusion goin’ on”).  Third, these musics are fused together in several different ways, such as morphing, counterpoint, and slipping back and forth among themselves.  Finally, much of the piece is intended to go as fast as feasible, and therefore as close to the limit as the players dare.  Hence the whole thing could blow at any minute…


Fusebox (for the Paul Dresher Ensemble's EA Band)

Live Performance at the University of Kansas City-Missiouri for the UMKC Summer Composers Workshop, June 19th, 2017.  

I was delighted to play this beautiful piece by Jim Mobberley! I look forward to performing more of his music!

James Mobberley: Ripples from "Phenomena"

Fox Stevenson - Miss You (foxsky's ALL CLAWS remix)

Performers and interested listeners can find score pages on my website:  www.jamesmobberleymusic.com.  Email me at:  mobberleyj@umkc.edu.  These pieces of music have been written over the last 30 years, and represent a collection of works that have not been commercially recorded, or which were recorded a number of years ago.  I teach music composition at the Conservatory of Music and Dance at the University of Missouri-Kansas City.

EDGES Movement I Back from the Edge for wind ensemble

Jim Mobberley

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