can be performed together or separately
narrator, cl/bs cl, Bb tpt/picc tpt/ C tpt/ flugelhorn, vn, vc, perc
- Hermes and the Milk-white Cows
- Brer Rabbit Gets the Meat
Available from Subito Music
Commissioned by Southampton Chamber Music Festival
These are my own re-tellings of two important multi-cultural stories in which the clarinetist and the trumpeter exhibit the sort of fast doubling routinely found in a Broadway orchestra pit but rarely on view in the chamber music hall, and the percussionist is wildly busy, too. The sound worlds of the two pieces differ considerably, with a vibe-based ethereal quality to the Hermes story and a Preservation Hall jazz orientation for Brer Rabbit. Each features a substantial set-piece: in Hermes it is the “world’s first lullaby” and in Brer Rabbit it is a Cakewalk. The two twenty-minute halves, with ten or so minutes between for instrument introduction and questions, come to 50 minutes, or one school period. Ideal for a young audiences touring ensemble.