Finished Work!

I've just finished my latest tape piece and I think it' s pretty good, even if I do say so myself. It's composed from sounds derived from tapping and scraping a number of small ceramic works that were given to me by ceramic artist, Tomomi Kitazawa. I made the recordings over two years ago, but I have never been satisfied with the compositions I had attempted with them previously. The sounds have a wonderful grainy quality to them that I was eager to exploit and this time, I think I have managed it.

I had set myself two goals with this piece. One was to exceed 10 minutes duration. The reason for this was to force myself to work hard to develop the material. Many of my most recent pieces are very short and focus on the presentation of one or two ideas. What I was aiming for in this piece was to work developmentally and to engage with longer forms. The other goal I set myself was to write gestural music rather than the textural music I have produced previously in this genre.

I haven't managed to come up with a suitable title for this piece yet. I'm looking for a word in Japanese that is related to ceramics, or percussive/grainy noises. I was thinking of Pachinko, because there is a section with tumbling percussive sounds that reminds me of the amusement arcades I saw on a recent visit to Japan, but I don't think that is really what I'm going for.

There is a rough version of this piece available on my MySpace site and I will put a finished version up soon.

http://www.myspace.com/stephenkilpatrick

This new piece will be played at a concert entitled Echochroma 4, which will happen in the next few weeks at Leeds Metropolitan University.

Flute Trio Update

I've almost finished one of the movements of my Flute Trio for Expatrio. It's been slow going so far, but I'm starting to come to terms with that particular instrumental grouping. I've been a bit shy about playing any of it to anyone so far, but I ran it by a trusted composer friend this morning and they gave me some really positive feedback about it.

What I am trying to do in this piece is incorporate what I have learnt working with electroacoustic composition into my instrumental writing and so far it seems to be working. The material of the first movement is derived from the partials produced by the flute when playing particular multiphonics. In this way, spectral elements of the flute define the material around which harmony and pitch relationships are based.

Frakture Big Band

You can find a recording of me playing with the Frakture Big Band here

http://www.frakture.org/ensembles/fbb_audio.htm

The track is "Suck it and See It". I'm playing the Jazzy sounding guitar and the fuzzy bass guitar!