Displaced: 101 ways to long for a home (after Emma Willemse) (2018)
for keyboard soloist and foundsoundtrack
Dedicated to Rudolph and Emma Willemse
Commissioned by Rudolph Willemse
Publisher: Bardic Edition
Duration: c. 26 minutes
Première
First performance: Saturday 24 August 2019; Bowed Electrons, South African College of Music, Rosebank, Cape Town; Michael Blake keyboard soloist
Programme Note
Displaced is a response to the work of Emma Willemse’s collection of 101 artist books 'Displaced' which I saw complete at the 2018 Woordfees in Stellenbosch when she was artist in residence. Her work deals with, among others, issues of displacement and migration, loss and longing, and these are also explored in my piece. We share in common an interest in the use of 'objets trouvés' in our disciplines, many of Emma's artist books in this collection using discarded parquet flooring for example, and my piece similarly using the sounds of these books which I recorded in her studio, as well as fragments of bow music, choral singing, harpsichord music, percussion music - some from field recordings I have made over the years - and fragments from some of my own pieces time-stretched, transposed, reversed, and superimposed. The material which the keyboard plays is also found sound, taken from several earlier pieces of mine, and the prepared piano sounds were found samples for which I had to simulate preparations after I had finished the piece. I love the fact that in France 'objets trouvés' is also the phrase for 'lost property', since I no longer remember where some of these sounds came from. Displaced: 101 Ways to Long for a Home was commissioned by Rudolph Willemse.
for keyboard soloist and foundsoundtrack
Dedicated to Rudolph and Emma Willemse
Commissioned by Rudolph Willemse
Publisher: Bardic Edition
Duration: c. 26 minutes
Première
First performance: Saturday 24 August 2019; Bowed Electrons, South African College of Music, Rosebank, Cape Town; Michael Blake keyboard soloist
Programme Note
Displaced is a response to the work of Emma Willemse’s collection of 101 artist books 'Displaced' which I saw complete at the 2018 Woordfees in Stellenbosch when she was artist in residence. Her work deals with, among others, issues of displacement and migration, loss and longing, and these are also explored in my piece. We share in common an interest in the use of 'objets trouvés' in our disciplines, many of Emma's artist books in this collection using discarded parquet flooring for example, and my piece similarly using the sounds of these books which I recorded in her studio, as well as fragments of bow music, choral singing, harpsichord music, percussion music - some from field recordings I have made over the years - and fragments from some of my own pieces time-stretched, transposed, reversed, and superimposed. The material which the keyboard plays is also found sound, taken from several earlier pieces of mine, and the prepared piano sounds were found samples for which I had to simulate preparations after I had finished the piece. I love the fact that in France 'objets trouvés' is also the phrase for 'lost property', since I no longer remember where some of these sounds came from. Displaced: 101 Ways to Long for a Home was commissioned by Rudolph Willemse.
