Output details
35 - Music, Drama, Dance and Performing Arts
Royal Academy of Music
Orfordness and Piano Quintet: Fosdyke Wash
Two compositions are submitted here as a product of a single research process.
Duration of Orfordness: c.17 minutes.
Duration of Fosdyke Wash: c.16 minutes.
Orfordness first performed by Zubin Kanga, King’s Place, 13 February 2012.
Fosdyke Wash first performed by Zubin Kanga (piano) and the Kreutzer Quartet, St John’s Church, Waterloo Festival, 29 June 2013.
Video of first performance of Orfordness: http://youtu.be/q69LWSTR8Ng
Studio recording of Orfordness: http://soundcloud.com/davidgortonmusic/orfordness
Studio recording of Fosdyke Wash: http://soundcloud.com/davidgortonmusic/fosdyke-wash
Two compositions that explore notions of landscape and ‘21st-century pastoral’, both of which were written as a result of extensive experimental workshops with the pianist Zubin Kanga. Fosdyke Wash uses an e-bow inside the piano to create a timbre that links the piano and the strings. The microtonal scordatura of the strings and the naturally-flat 7th harmonics inside the piano are set in contrast with a diatonic chorale section. The piece also includes musical depictions of rainfall and a mechanical digger.
Orfordness explores the theme of ‘virtuosity’ through materials that alternate between performance states of ‘efficiency’ and ‘resistance’. Workshop sessions were used to test Kanga’s technical limits as well as to generate materials and new techniques inside the piano.
Work on the piece was presented at the Tracking the Creative Process in Music Conference, Lille, 30 September 2011.
