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"Sit Stand Walk"

The title "Sit Stand Walk" describes the physical positions an individual or group might adopt when meditating. The piece was written for a solo clarinetist and twelve other players. The clarinetist took the quasi-theatrical role of the meditator as he moved through the three different positions each prompting a different musical section of the work.

The aim of the researcher/composer’s piece was metaphorically to place each listener inside the head of the meditating clarinetist, with the music of the ensemble allowing the listener to share the contemplative experience of the clarinetist. In this sense the researcher/composer’s music is not merely a representation of meditation, but is the meditation itself, an outcome sought through the transparency of the music’s language that seeks to reveal rather than inform.

The research processes that work toward this aim of engaging the listener in the meditative experience include precise spatialisation of players and a significant theatrical element. The solo clarinetist, for example, hears sounds from other musicians positioned off-stage that are inputs to his meditation and thus ready to be transmitted to the listeners now sharing his experiences.

A second research process considered the contrasting roles the soloist must often play: sometimes leading the ensemble, at other times being borne along by it; sometimes alone but supported by material shared with others, but then required to seek his/her own introverted future. "Sit Stand Walk" exhibits all these characteristic positions of the soloist by both the distribution of musical material and through the changing physical positions of the players.

"Sit Stand Walk" is published by Ricordi, London and was first performed in 2011 by the ensemble CHROMA as part of Spitalfields Festival.