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The Beck / Sighting the Tiger

My research output is centered on researching the relationship of composition and performance in jazz, contemporary notated composition and cross-media performances. It doesn’t conform to any one linear narrative that shows a single of arc of progression; probably a better image might be of an interwoven heterophony of research and composition, with ideas and techniques generated in one area informing (or being blatantly stolen) to be used to disrupt the expectations in another.

These two pieces are examples (see attached SCORES printed) of a series investigations into Takemitsu’s use of Japanese Gagaku rhythmic and harmonic structures and Tang Court transcriptions (taken from sources such as S. Nuss: “Hearing Japanese, Hearing Takemitsu”, Contemporary Music Review, and research by Robert Garfia and Eta Harich-Schneider).

In 'The Beck' (instrumental recording on CD 'SNOW BLUE NIGHT', Track 3), one of six commissioned by the TS Eliot Festival (June 2009) for a performance with the writer and poet Grevel Lindop, and 'Sighting the Tiger' (SEE YOUTUBE LINK), one of five pieces written for a performance with the poet Ruth Padel at the Cambridge Festival of Ideas, (October 2009), combine the “mistaken” mis-matching isorhythms found in classic gagaku (thought to be caused as a result of 1100 years of a ‘Chinese whispers’ process in the handing down of a largely oral tradition from China since the 10th century) with the 10-chord system used by the Shō with its anchoring dyads of seconds. These techniques are employed in the interest of creating disruption; using asymmetrical, isorhythmically-derived structure that prevents the poet from settling into their normal, often strophic reading styles and forces them into re-assessing the rhythmic structure of their text to “show something new”.