Output details

CD recording 'Three Windows'

'Three Windows' examines the harpsichord’s role away from mainstream Western Art music, and its continuing evolution as an instrument that reflects recent trends in composition and improvisation. The harpsichord is redefined through juxtaposition with instruments rooted in the 20th and 21st centuries, strongly located in the popular imagination, e.g. electric guitar and saxophone. Through the harpsichord-as-filter, interactions between traditions and eclectic influences interrogate and elucidate the notion of what exactly is, or can be termed: jazz, classical, minimalism, world music, rock, free improvisation, film music and visualisation.

I direct four pieces, utilising experience and knowledge of Baroque style and performance practice, in combination with seemingly-unrelated traditions such as17th-century unmeasured Préludes and classical North Indian ragas. Extracts from D'Anglebert are reorganised, and a signature chord or pattern of notes is isolated to act as a drone and structuring point to create ornamentation and improvisation in an ‘alap’ style. 'Shufah', based on a 'Hindustani Air', uses ‘found’ material from an aural culture transcribed into Western notation (1789), and therefore already removed from the original. I extend this process in collaboration with Wingfield, creating a 'jazz' piece with variations. The compositional process employed was rarely fixed from the outset. 'Amber' began with my free avant-garde improvisation over which Wingfield juxtaposed his extemporisation. Punctuated by whirling sounds of machinery, this filmic quality allows the listener to create an external sense of place.

New ways of recreating or evoking other instruments on the harpsichord were devised, e.g. the African mbira. The types of improvisation developed by the guitar and saxophone often depend on those heard through the harpsichord. The sonic possibilities and creative input of the electric guitar and saxophone allow the harpsichord to expand, explore, interact, and invent.