Loopy Louise is my wife Helen. On a train journey to Manchester, she suggested I write something for just mouthpieces, so that’s what this is. Or intended to be, anyway. It works much better on the whole instrument, and is an encore piece, containing 10 ways to say Goodbye, in about 90 seconds.
Quite the opposite of Speedbird, this is sleazy stuff. It sets off at a hell of a lick but soon collapses into a dark, smoky riff. The tenor sax takes a solo before being undertaken by the sultry baritone in its sultriest register. The piece builds with a huge crescendo, and ends as low and dirty as possible, on the…
Here are the Polish and British national anthems, closely entwined and used in some of Lutoslawski’s favourite techniques. This sounds intense, but is actually an attractive piece on the ear, and I enjoyed exploring it.
This was written for the Cory Composition Competition in 2019, and though it didn’t get anywhere, it has had its followers, and performances. Obviously a Spanish piece, there’s a section that evokes a Spanish guitar, with 6 instruments representing one open string each. It starts as a fiesta, with some flamenco clapping, then the guitar introduces the beautiful middle section,…
Pam-e-ent-see Kaz. I wanted to call this piece ‘A tribute to Serocki’, but it translates better into Polish to say Pamieci, which is closer to ‘in memory of’. Kaz is a flippant shortening of Serocki’s first name, Kazimierz. And the piece is less in memory of the composer himself than a tribute to his Sonatina for Trombone, written in 1954…
Pete Radcliffe was a history teacher at our school. He lived at the end of our road and was a keen guitarist. I’d started playing, and he introduced me to some of his favourites, Larry Coryell, John McLaughlin, Al Di Meola. Pete didn’t take a guitar group at school but this piece was written very much with that in mind. …
The Recital. Eight brand new pieces for trombone and piano. If I’ve had a Big Idea in the last few years, this is it. I noticed, when at student recitals, that too much of the repertoire was the same stuff I’d been playing at college 30 years ago. To gain the contrast they needed for their performance, students are still…
RBY is a piece of many colours, not just the three primary ones. I have tried to portray some facet of the tones you get when you mix two of the three colours on a palette, i.e. orange, green and purple/violet, and of course black, the dark heart of the piece when you mix all three colours together. Thus black…
Another piece that’s more rock than classical really. In fact there is a version with drum kit, which is the version I always listen to. And another of my weird titles. It’s just because it’s lovey-dovey at the beginning and end, with what I then considered rather astral, floaty chords. The middle is all driving rock for trombones.
