The closing aria from Act 1 of Vivier's opera Kopernikus, arr. by Trio Scordatura. With special guest Arnold Marinissen, percussion.

Tao tao tao (Claude Vivier, 1978, arr. Trio Scordatura)

A piece for wind orchestra commissioned and premiered by the Riga Professional Wind Orchestra (conductor, Andris Poga), composed by Nic Gotham in 2010. "Every Day" (or "Tous les jours") takes its name from the famous phrase coined in 1920 by French pharmacist/psychologist Émile Coué: "Every day, in every way, I'm getting better and better." (In the original French: "Tous les jours à tous points de vue je vais de mieux en mieux.") Coué had his patients repeat this phrase to themselves, mantra-like, many times each day in order to cure themselves of any malady. He is credited with the discovery and first successful use of what became known as the placebo effect. Can music have a similar, positive, healing effect? Many people believe so - I will leave it as an open question. In my piece, every new musical phrase is a setting of the same text: Tous les jours, etc. The mantra is heard in many forms and contexts: some hopeful, some full of doubt.

Every Day

premiere performance, Theater Dakota, The Hague, April 2013 (with third movement spliced in from a rehearsal because the original distorted). Four movements: I. Progiesmiais II. Grass Wounds III. Jonui Plepui IV. Taksi Chorale.

Transmission (Anton Lukoszevieze, 2013)

I'm a composer and saxophone-player. Born in the UK, I've spent most of my life in Canada but lived in Riga, Latvia from 1998 to 2012. I now live in Toronto again.  As a musician, I split my time evenly between writing "contemporary classical" music and writing and playing jazz and jazz-related music. (Please visit NiMo Jazz here on SoundCloud to hear some of this.)

Every Day

Nic Gotham

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