Publisher: Bardic Edition
Playing Score (2 copies) BDE 807
Duration: c. 4 minutes
First performance: Thursday 6 March 2003; Oxford, United Kingdom; Adam Bushell vibraphone, Tom Norell marimba.
Further performances:
24.05.2003; Brighton Festival, UK; Adam Bushell vibraphone, Tom Norell marimba
8.07.2004; New Music Indaba, Grahamstown, South Africa; Frank Mallows vibraphone, Magda de Vries marimba (South African premiere)
25.09.2007; Baxter Concert Hall, Cape Town; Michael Blake Ensemble (Frank Mallows vibraphone, Magda de Vries marimba)
18.11.2007; ZK Matthews Hall, Pretoria; Michael Blake Ensemble
“38a Hill Street Blues” owes something to the uhadi bow music of the Xhosa in the Eastern Cape where I used to live. It also owes something to stride piano playing (in particular Meade Lux Lewis’s Honky Tonk Train Blues) which I listened to a lot in my teens. The title itself possibly owes something to an American television series, but was in fact my home address in Grahamstown. I wrote the piece, in the desert in Namibia during January 2000, at the request of Marcel Worms for his ongoing New Blues for Piano project.