programme note

A moment of pause – transfixed! The vocalist walks towards the creature, slowly contemplating it. She is shadowed by the saxophone; a wayward voice lingering in the air – who’s air? Her air? It’s air? And who’s voice? It’s own? Or another’s?

(Stage directions taken from the elephant in blue: part one)

The larger ensemble work waiting (2020-21) which was written at the behest of the briefly active Ensemble Zeitstoff and presented as part of the Deutsche Musikwettbewerb included a movement for solo saxophone – (transfixed). This comes after the player is silent for the entirety of the first movement, and wanders from the back of the performing space in a serpentine fashion, coiling its lines around the immobilised vocalist before taking its place within the ensemble. This ensemble piece itself is a central panel to a forthcoming operatic project, the elephant in blue (2020-).

(transfixed) (2021) alone is a work of mellifluous and somewhat mystic value. Taking on the image of a wisp – or a kind of ghostly apparition – the instrument becomes inhabited by ghostly wobbling and dripping sounds, tumbling through threads within the empty spaces of silence; following, flowing, fleeting, fixating… transfixed!

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