25 Measures
for solo clarinet [1996]

This quirky minature was written for clarinettist Peter Jenkin in 1996, when Kats-Chernin was in residence in the Peggy Glanville-Hicks house in Sydney. Its wit and charm is typical of the composer's style.

Aurora
for bass clarinet & CD [2001]

Aurora was composed as a collaborative project with Will Frasier, a wonderful musician who plays keyboards and creates sounds on computer. He is a member of a band called The Hive and studied composition at the University of Sydney. The work was created in three different stages: firstly, I recorded a sustained cluster on a Hammond organ, phasing the drawbars to create different rhythms as the partials of the pitches transformed; secondly, I recorded some bass clarinet improvisations that Will then processed digitally. That completed the CD part. I then created a free counterpoint over this - the only part of the music that is notated - with extensive improvised sections. At the time this piece was created, I was in the middle of a Canadian winter. I wanted to create the feeling of a huge space, the continual shift of focus suggesting the flickering lights of the Aurora Borealis.

Š Margery Smith

Bastard's Broth
for bass clarinet & CD [1993]

Bastard's Broth was commissioned by Northern Arts (UK) and first performed by Steve Cottrell at the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne. The title is a reference to the classic album by Miles Davis, "Bitches' Brew", and is a surrealistic melange of jazz styles in which the soloist fights a lonely battle with an unrelenting sequenced tape part.

Chaos of Delight I
for bass clarinet [1995]

Chaos of Delight I, the first in the "Chaos of Delight", series is based on birdsong, and is a virtuosic display of avian sonorities - from the boom of the tue kakapo to the shriek of the morepork. The title is taken from a passage in "A Field Guide to the Birds of New Zealand", by Fall, Gibson and Turbott: "There are still many quiet places, far from the madding crowd, where the mind can become, in Darwin's phrase, 'a chaos of delight' at the abundance and variety of birds which pass before the eye or perplex the ear". The piece was commissioned by New Zealand bass clarinettist Andrew Uren with funding provided by the QEII Arts Council of NZ.

chorinho pra ela
for bass clarinet [2002]

chorinho pra ela is derived from the first movement of the duo "Pas de Deux", which was commissioned by Charisma (Ros Dunlop, clarinet, and Julia Ryder, cello). It is an evocative work - a pastiche which conjures up harmonies and motives from Central Europe. As the title suggests, it's a choro - in this case a little choro - the word coming from the Portuguese verb chorar, meaning to weep or to cry. The form, which is related to North American ragtime and is of great significance in Brazilian music, has been described by some as being a perfect hybrid of classical and popular forms. The piece is receiving its first performances on this tour.

Cut to the Chase
for clarinet solo [1996]

Cut to the Chase was written for clarinettist Peter Jenkin in 1996. Peter had requested a one-minute clarinet solo with the same virtuosity as Vella's "Tango", for clarinet and piano, but much shorter. The resultant gem demands that the soloist conceal breath intakes in order to reinforce the relentless moto perpetuo style. The title refers to early vaudeville routines when the artist, upon realising that the audience is not responding or that something has gone wrong, "cuts to the chase" - when he or she is chased around the stage to close the act.

Hauturu
for bass clarinet [1992]

This piece ("Where the Winds Rest") was was inspired by a visit to the rugged island of Little Barrier (Hauturu), a bird sanctuary in the Hauraki gulf, with its largely unspoilt grandeur, rugged beaches and huge trees amid thick jungle, and the remarkable variety and sounds of the indigenous birds. Several new techniques for bass clarinet used include colour fingerings, tremolos and vocal effects, and soft aeolian breath sounds reminiscent of wind through trees.

Iza
for two bass clarinets [1995]

notes on the piece still to come ...

Lament
for clarinet & bass clarinet [2002]

In Lament, which was written in response to the death of a friend, I wanted to spin a long line of wordless lamentation. I was aiming to explore what one could say within quite strict limitations. Spinning out a few notes at a time: twisting and turning, keeping up a sense of momentum and a sense of progression. Underneath, the bleak intervals of 4ths and 5ths at cadence points are used to underpin the line, but also to unsettle it with uneasy independent movement.

J.F.

Merry-Go-Round
for clarinet, bass clarinet & CD-ROM [2002]
or clarinet & CD-ROM [2002]

photography by George Gittoes; additional photography, of model Holly Berri, by Alice Wesley-Smith

"Any outsider who sticks his finger in the Afghan pie finds it was a damn sight hotter than he thought and ruins the pie for the Afghans. Persia, Britain, Russia and now the United States have all found their goals unobtainable and the cost of seeking them unsustainable, but the greatest price has always been paid by the poor, bloodied people of Afghanistan." (Griffiths, John C., Afghanistan, A History of Conflict, Timat Publishing, 2001, p263)

Australian artist and photographer George Gittoes went to Afghanistan last year, returning with two and a half thousand photographs. I went through this vast collection and made a selection for this piece. The title comes, obviously, from the home-made wooden merry-go-round that George photographed, but it also reflects what the Afghan people must have thought when facing the latest of many invasions, this one by America and others (including Australia).

My thanks to George, Charisma (who commissioned it, with assistance from the Music Board of the Australia Council, and premiered it at the 2002 Darwin International Guitar Festival), Gabriel Dalton, Holly Berri and Alice Wesley-Smith.

M.W-S.

Mitchell's Principles Based on Albanian Laws
for two clarinets [2000]

First performed by Ian Mitchell and Colin Lawton at Goldsmiths College, this work explores musical styles derived from areas around Albania. Definitely "Klezmer".

NRG
for bass clarinet [1996]

NRG was composed for Dutch bass-clarinettist Henri Bok and his group Bass Instincts. Some time before I had composed "Bisoux", a rather languid nocturne for cor anglais and bass clarinet. However I now wished to compose something a little more up-tempo. Another nacht-stucke, yes, but this time much more funky and dance-like, perhaps even carnal. Certainly not a piece to be performed before retiring!

Panama
for bass clarinet & CD [1991]

The title refers to the 1930s jazz standard of the same name. The tape part has a strong rhythmic drive with a traditional jazz band rhythm section, computerised hi-hat, and acoustic bass.

Tagore Songs (1, 2 & 4)
for clarinet & CD [1997]

1. Reflected ...from a far off world ...and vanished!
2. Swept by the mad cadence of the storm
4. Where roads are made, I lose my way

In India, a young performer learns her/his instrument by studying with a singer - so the music always has a vocal foundation. Tagore Songs emulates this improvisatory spirit, although the piece is in fact fully notated. The movement titles are fragments from writings of Bengali poet, philosopher, mystic, painter, musician Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941), whose work holds even more power for Brockman now than it did twenty years ago.

see http://www.janebrockman.org

Tekee Tokee Tomak
for clarinet & CD-Rom [2003]

images from East Timor by various photographers, including Ros Dunlop, Kathryn Morgan, Danny Ross, Alice Wesley-Smith, Martin Wesley-Smith and Peter Wesley-Smith

Tekee Tokee Tomak is my latest (last?) piece about East Timor, and comes directly from my two trips there in 2002. It records and reflects the positive spirit of the East Timorese people, acting as an antidote, perhaps, to the necessarily bleak nature of "Welcome to the Hotel Turismo" and "X" - a celebration of the truth of Xanana's slogan "To resist is to win!".

The music comes from various sources, including snippets from previous pieces of mine and samples of songs written and/or recorded in support of the East Timor cause. The talking head belongs to Sister Susan Connelly, of the Mary MacKillop Institute of East Timorese Studies in Sydney - a champion of justice for all, particularly for East Timorese refugees in Australia that the Australian government wants to send home.

My thanks to many people, including the photographers, The Anin Murak Quartet (Antonietta Magno, Milca Esmeralda Pinheiro, Maria dos Santos and António de Padua Martins Soares), Louise Byrne, Geoffrey Collins, Sister Susan Connelly, Jon Lewis, Midnight Oil, Nicola Quilter, The Solidarity Choir, Tall Poppies Records and Rob Wesley-Smith.

M.W-S.

Weapons: weep on
for ??? [2002]

notes on this piece to be supplied ...

Welcome to the Hotel Turismo
for bass clarinet & CD-ROM [2000]

It is September 1999 in Dili, East Timor. The arrival of the Australian-led INTERFET military coalition has forced the thugs of the Indonesian army and its militias to flee, leaving thousands dead and the entire country in ruins. The Hotel Turismo, though trashed, still stands, its blackened rooms providing shelter for soldiers, journalists and homeless East Timorese - refugees in their own country but free at last.

A Turismo employee, "John" Pereira, who has worked there since before the Indonesian invasion of 1975, reflects on what the hotel has seen during the resultant carnage. When the ruined piano in the foyer mysteriously starts to play by itself, he takes out his metaphysical bass clarinet and joins in ...

This piece was commissioned by Tall Poppies Records, with financial assistance from the Music Fund of the Australia Council. Technical facilities were provided by the Electronic Music Studio of the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. Originally for the cellist David Pereira (no relation to "John"), I arranged it for bass clarinet last year so that Ros could play it in Timor (our first performance there was in the Hotel Turismo itself!). The graphics came from a variety of sources, including the Internet. I have permission from many copyright owners to use their material; others, however, I have not been able to identify and/or contact. If any of them is aggrieved, s/he should contact me (mwsmith@shoalhaven.net.au). My thanks to them all.

M.W-S.

White Knight & Beaver
for clarinet, bass clarinet & CD [1985]

White Knight & Beaver is one of Wesley-Smith's best-known Lewis Carroll pieces. It's as if a bass clarinet-playing Dodgson (Carroll's real self) shows Alice how interesting snippets of music result when you play a music-box backwards and upside-down - and how you can discover palindromes and doublet processes if you play a musical encoding of the DNA of the beta globin sub-unit of the haemoglobin of Escherichia coli, a bacterium found in the stomach.

A new recording of this piece, played by Charisma (Ros Dunlop, clarinet, and Julia Ryder, cello), has recently been released on the CD "Charisma" (Great White Noise GWN002). It will be available for sale at the concert - or it can be ordered from
http://www.greatwhitenoise.net/rosdunlop/html/cdsales.html.

Worldwhorls
for bass clarinet [2000]

notes on this piece to be supplied; in the meantime, consider this:

"Reflections", "Os" and "Sinfin" are works for woodwind and vibraphone reflecting aspects of the three great Rose windows of Chartres Cathedral. Worldwhorls, which completes the tetralogy, has its origins in the Labyrinth beneath the West Rose, which itself has strong connections with that window. The Labyrinth seems to me to be a metaphor for life itself. Commencing in the womb-like middle, one makes onešs way via 34 sharp angles (corresponding to the 34 verses of the Dies Irae) and 35 passes, to emerge facing this brilliant judgement-day window. The piece bases its structure and wayward energy on the experience of walking the Labyrinth with this metaphor in mind.

A.G.

X
for clarinet & CD-ROM [2000]

In 1999 the world watched as the Indonesian army and its puppet militia tore tiny East Timor apart. Meanwhile, popular resistance leader Gusmão (the "X" of the title) languished in Cipinang Prison in Jakarta. I composed "X" during those tragic months.

"X" was commissioned by American clarinettist F. Gerard Errante, who premiered it at the Seoul Arts Centre in 1999 as part of the "Sixth Computer Music Festival of Seoul" presented by KEAMS (The Korean Electro-Acoustic Music Society). Financial assistance came from the Music Fund of the Australia Council. Technical facilities were provided by the Electronic Music Studio of the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. My thanks to all who assisted, especially to the mostly anonymous photographers who, in some cases unwittingly, supplied the images. As with "Welcome to the Hotel Turismo", any aggrieved copyright owner is welcome to discuss the situation with me (mwsmith@shoalhaven.net.au).

A recording of an audio-only version of this piece, played by Ros Dunlop, has recently been released on the CD "X" (Great White Noise GWN003). It will be available for sale at the concert - or it can be ordered from
http://www.greatwhitenoise.net/rosdunlop/html/cdsales.html.

For more information, see http://www.shoalhaven.net.au/~mwsmith/x.html.

M.W-S.

You Can Take It Anywhere!
for clarinet & delay [2000]

This was written for American clarinettist Gerard Errante on one of his visits to Australia. Judy writes: "In this work, the juxtaposition of intervals creates a whole world of harmony for solo instrument. A lot of careful work went into the actual pitch of the notes which followed one another - 'careful' for reasons of ease to facilitate a linear harmonic structure. The performer uses this to be free with the way s/he takes it."