Seasons for Brass

Frost

Instrumentation: Trumpet in C, Trumpet in Bb, French Horn in Bb/F, Tuba, Audio and Video Playback

Duration: 6

Year: 2017

FROST is a play between the escapism in landscapes with depictions of ice, snow and winter and the realism of brass sounds created through buzzing, breathing and blowing. These two worlds are superimposed onto each other with video, audio-playback and live- ensemble to present a dialogue about the creation and perception of sound.

The piece has a 4-speaker setup, which spatially allocates the sound slightly behind and in between the players so that the mixture of audio and live-musicians would be almost indistinguishable. The screenplay and audio can be adapted for individual ensembles. This “adaptation” can factor changes in location and cast, and even individual musical actions can be rewritten to reflect the possibilities of each new location and ensemble. The score indicates five extra E-(electronic) instruments: these are the voices which need to be pre- recorded by the ensemble, partially in special locations captured with video.

Rain

Instrumentation: 2 piccolo trumpet in Bb, 1 french horn, 1 trombone with F-valve, 1 tuba, Audio and Video Playback

Duration: 6

Year: 2018

Air, in some areas of our atmospheres where it is very dense, molecules form cluster and air becomes rain, falling down to earth.

Its like a super percussion, dropping million of mallets onto the surface of metal, stone, wood or plastic - it all sounds diffrent.

In the world of a brass player, water is a very undesired element. During long performances water condensates in the brass instruments. It’s like a design glitch, the water starts blocking the airflow and creates unwanted sound artefacts.  The players have to get rid of the water with their water key.

These kind of ‘glitches’ become a musical element in this piece and start a dialogue with video, audio and the instrumentalists.