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£30.00
strange geometry
Descriptionstrange geometrywas commissioned by Morgan Griffiths and the Hammonds Saltaire Band for their performance at the Brass in Concert Championships of 2015.As a bit of a space/sci-fi geek, as well as a musician, two events during the summer of 2015 had a particular effect on me. The first was the tragic early death in a plane crash of the famous film composer James Horner. Horner's music, particularly in films like 'Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan', 'Avatar', 'Apollo 13' and even his debut in Roger Corman's 1980 budget film 'Battle Beyond the Stars', defined for a generation the sound of sci-fi at the cinema. Along with John Williams he created the vocabulary for those who wish to express other-worldly wonder in music and his inventive talent will be much missed in an industry where originality has become something of a dirty word in recent years.The second event was the epic flyby of Pluto by the NASA New Horizons spacecraft. There are many reasons to find this mission inspiring - for example, the scientists and engineers behind it created a craft that has travelled at 37,000 mph for nine years and three billion miles to arrive within seventy-two seconds of the predicted time for the flyby. That they achieved this with such accuracy is an outstanding tribute to humanity's ingenuity and insatiable curiosity. However, the most exciting aspect of the mission was the clear, high resolution pictures of this unthinkably remote and inhospitable world beamed back to mission control. The best previous image of Pluto was an indistinct fuzzy blob - suddenly we could see mountains made of ice, glaciers of methane and carbon monoxide and nitrogen fog - features previously unimagined on a world thought to be a slightly dull ball of cold rock. The BBC's venerable astronomy programme 'The Sky at Night' waxed lyrical about these newly discovered features, referring to "the surprising discoveries of mountains and strange geometry on the surface of this cold distant world".I like to think that Horner would have been as inspired as I have been by this real-life science story, and this piece uses some of the vocabulary of the sci-fi movie soundtrack in a tribute to the memory of a great musician and to the inspirational geeks at NASA who have boldly taken us where no-one has gone before.Note: This work comes with a B4 portrait score. Listen to a preview and follow the music below!
Estimated dispatch 7-14 working days
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£61.00
Lord of the Flies - Gauthier Dupertuis
The title of this work by Gauthier Dupertuis refers to the novel Lord of the Flies by William Golding, published in 1954. Lord of the Flies is intended to be a small symphonic poem describing different episodes of the book: the despair of the children stranded on the island, the use of the unifying conch and symbol of democracy, the adventures, and the formation of the camp and finally the savagery of the clan of Jack which undeniably leads to chaos. The finale is mysterious and half-tone, imbued with both the relief of having been rescued, and a deep sadness linked to the tragic events that have occurred on the island.All the main themes and elements developed in the work come from the idea "d-e-f", exposed from the first bars. The orchestration is intended to be variable in geometry and avoids the main technical difficulties related to the instruments. However, the composer wanted to find as many colors as possible and avoided confining himself to too "simple" harmonies.Lord of the Flies: a piece accessible to most brass bands.
Estimated dispatch 5-14 working days