I believe that the human experience (on both the physical and
psychological level) parallels universal tendances: chaos / order,
growth / entropy, and integration / disintegration. These are the
principles I try to express in my music. I express these by way
of musical archetypes, perhaps in the same way that Van Gough expressed
joy by the spiralling of his trees or flowers. By using compositional
techniques: different juxtapositions of registers, rising, falling
gestures, rhythmic diminution and expansion, random sequences of
musical events, use of different scales and motives, colours and
textures I have tried to give musical expression to these archetypes.
It is not possible to categorise, label and understand the gamut
of internal and external human experience but I guess this music
is my attempt to do so. As a bird sings as an expression of its
being so humans make music as an expression of theirs. Though I
am trying to bring the listener (and myself) into a higher awareness,
one can only come to that awareness by honouring the human experience,
the working of the mind and its disturbances. These disturbances
must be acknowledged in order to move beyond them into higher spheres.
To me listening to music and writing music is somehow an attempt
to understand my experience and give meaning to this life I have
been given. As I journey out-ward into the world, music is the
journey in-ward.
Besides the work of other composers and various ancient music,
a strong influence for me is the sounds of nature. My piano work
The Waves was inspired by the nature of waves in the ocean. In
As all the Heavens were a Bell, I tried to create the sound of
wind, birds, insects, animals and the industrial world of man.
I attempt to evoke the feeling of the sun, the majesty of the moon.
I like to use the sounds of breath through the instruments, which
is how the piece begins and ends. I have always enjoyed the sounds
of the musicians taking their breath and made sure not to cut it
out during editing. The breath is so crucial; the breath is the
beginning and sustenance of all life. We are if nothing else, breath.
Poetry has been an essential influence on my work. In my last
couple of years at Victorian College of the Arts I immersed my
self in the poetry of Sylvia Plath. I would memorise many of her
poems and in writing my music I tried to recreate the feeling that
a certain poem gave me. When I went to New York in 1996 to study
clarinet I also did a course in poetry where I was first introduced
to the poetry of Emily Dickinson. I found her fascinating and felt
strong links with Plath. I was boarding at the time with a humanities
professor at my school (The Manhattan School of Music) who gave
me an amazing video with Adrianne Rich, Joyce Carol Oats and other
inspiring people speaking about Dickinson. And this is where I
first heard Dickinson’s poem #280 “I felt a Funeral,
in my brain,…”. As all the Heavens were a Bell takes
its title from a line in this poem, written in 1861. When I read
this poem, something resonated inside me, I felt she expressed
something profound and important. The evocation of a cosmic inner
world of anguish and transcendence. The kind of world I try to
evoke in my music.
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