influenced by Morton Feldman, this composition for solo bass clarinet and digital accompaniment incorporates field recordings of birds, a forest walk as well as digital recording of bass clarinet, flute and piano.

Bird Song

The lyrics for Solid Gold are the distillation of thirty years of number one hit song titles. Love is, not surprisingly, a big theme. From song titles absurd and poignant, from names of people I never knew or have since forgotten, I have winnowed down hundreds of song titles into a lean new lyric. I cast aside “Me and you and a dog named Boo”, put “Puppy Love” behind me and discarded “Mouldy Old Dough”. Sifting through the remaining hoard, I hoped to unearth the heart of the love song. Collaging selected titles into new and original lyrics, my quest echoes Foreigner's 1984 hit “I want to to know what love is”. In this maelstrom of romantic yearning, what does love mean? And who exactly is the singer? Is (s)he “Venus, Jezebel, Lady Madonna — Lola, Nikita, Sylvia's Mother”? Or is gender itself in question? “Fernando? Pinnochio? Mozart?” While the lyrics of Solid Gold are borrowed, the music is my own. This is not James Last's orchestra or Purple Haze arranged for symphony. In composing for chamber orchestra, I've tried to conjure the distinct sound world of pop production — from reverb, chorus, flange and distortion, to looping, static and cassette warp. I'm not looking for the tunes, but more for the dirt on the needle.

Solid Gold was commissioned by Orchestra Wellington and funded by Creative New Zealand. Many thanks to Marc Taddei, Adán Tijerina, Madeleine Pierard and the orchestra for bringing the music to life. 

© Juliet Kiri Palmer 2013

Solid Gold (excerpt)

CST088 Guitar & Voice 
Eric Chenaux

www.cstrecords.com/cst088

Eric Chenaux • "Simple Frontal"

New Zealand-Canadian composer Juliet Palmer is known as a “post-modernist with a conscience” (The Listener) whose work “crosses so many genres as to be in a category of its own” (Toronto Star). Juliet is the artistic director of Urbanvessel, a platform for interdisciplinary collaboration. Recent works: Stitch (Dora nominations Outstanding New Opera and Outstanding Production), Slip (Best Experimental Short, Toronto International Short Film Festival), and Voice-Box (Harbourfront World Stage premiere and Fresh Ground commission). Voice-Box was acclaimed as “a performance piece that smashes the boundaries between disciplines and leaves them sprawled out on the mat, down for the count” (Musicworks Magazine). Upcoming: Sweat, a cappella opera, with writer Anna Chatterton and director Tim Albery (Soundstreams); and the Toronto premiere of the chamber opera Shelter with writer Julie Salverson and director Keith Turnbull (Tapestry Opera) in June 2014.

Based in Toronto since 1998, Juliet's work has been featured around the world with performances at: New York’s Lincoln Center, London's Southbank Centre, the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, Bath International Festival, Voix Nouvelles France, Italy’s Angelica Festival, Evenings of New Music Bratislava, Musica Ficta Festival Lithuania, NYYD Festival Estonia, The Istanbul Festival, Soundculture Japan, the Adelaide Festival, the New Zealand International Arts Festival and Canada's Sound Symposium. Juliet was the 2011/12 Creative New Zealand/Jack C. Richards composer-in-residence at the New Zealand School of Music and the 2012 composer-in-residence of Orchestra Wellington. Juliet holds a PhD in composition from Princeton University and an M.Mus in performance, composition and time-based art from Auckland University.

Solid Gold (excerpt)

Juliet Palmer

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