LAST MAN STANDING
LAST MAN STANDING for Solo, unaccompanied Flute
Here’s a link to a YouTube video of Sarah Nielsen performing Last Man Standing.
It was written for Flautist, Kate Wilkinson, back when we were students together at the London College of Music.
The best thing about being at College was being able to work closely with players, with relative ease. As careers progress, diaries get ever busier and the chance to actually meet up and work on new music becomes harder to arrange!
The piece tells the story of the last person left alive on Earth and is available from J W Pepper as a download.
EVERYTHING STARTS FROM A DOT
Everything Starts From a Dot was selected as a test piece for the Irish National Band Championships held recently. Click on the title to link to a YouTube video of Dublin Concert Band’s performance.
The piece was commissioned by Dr. Matthew J George for the University of St, Thomas Wind Ensemble (St. Paul, Mn.) and thanks to the efforts of Jeff Mathews at Cane River Music has since been placed on the Texas Prescribed Music List (Which is a good thing!).
The piece takes its title from a quote by the Russian artist, Wassily Kandinsky and each of the three movements was written as a musical reaction to one of Kandinsky’s paintings. It’s not the first time that I have turned to Kandinsky for inspiration, but I will write about that another time.
Here are YouTube links to the excellent recording by the University of St. Thomas Wind Ensemble (Matthew George cond.) on their Naxos album, The Other Side
Time to start again
Starting Over
After Covid hit, I took a step back from writing music. I had accumulated piles of pieces - many published, loads not - and I felt it was a good time to re-evaluate my work and concentrate on making available my catalogue.
It was a fairly brutal process. Some pieces got put aside for publishing, and others got binned. I spent a lot of time agonising over how to ‘erase’ them. Do you do it permanently or keep a backup copy - just in case you change your mind? I decided this was a one-way process and deleted the files, although I have kept many hand-written ideas - just in case!
Having got through Covid lockdowns and the loss of much of my work, I was in the process of re-establishing my music writing when I had a cardiac arrest that left me in a coma. In the following months of recovery I watched as much of my work disappeared, which was frustrating. I was in the middle of a major course rewrite for the Royal Air Force (I teach Harmony and Composition there) and I will be forever grateful that they put the process on hold while I recoverd.
Fast forward to today, and I guess I feel I am in a position to make some progress now. I have recently delivered a new piece (more of that another time) and have finalised print versions of a number of works that I will start to make available once I have arranged / secured performances (If I can)! Having pieces is one thing but without live recordings, I think you have very little chance of persuading people to look at them, never mind actually programme them.
Anyway - Here we go…