11 May Foundry

Posted at 00:03h in large ensemble, works by

afl/fl/picc, cl/bcl, hn, tbn, pf/cel, vn + vc [11′] 2004.

Commissioner: Continuum Contemporary Music
Funder: The Laidlaw Foundation
Premiere: Continuum Ensemble with conductor Patrick Gallois, Music Gallery, Toronto, Canada , February 17, 2004.
Program note:

With the help of neighbours and a precarious arrangement of plywood and castors, we hauled an old cast iron bath tub from the back garden to the curb. Within hours it had vanished. Scooped up by scrap metal scavengers the tub was on its way to a new life as…girder, park bench, pipe, rebar, nail, hammer…who knows.

This piece is a musical foundry. My focus is on metal: sawn, hammered, melted, poured, moulded, cast, polished… The melodic material is based on pitch analyses of the sounds of drilling, hammering and sawing. I want to melt the material down to a metallic gleam.