Manchester Movements

for marimba and bass clarinet

Written for the 2017 Alba Music Festival, premiered by Transient Canvas on May 30th, 2017 in Alba, Italy

Notes:

Manchester Movements receives its title from two sources of inspiration, both concerning grief. While the concept behind this piece wasn’t necessarily a person’s passing or specifically the mourning process, the abstract qualities of the emotional state of someone who’s lost someone dear inform a great deal of the musical material of the piece. The idea of being locked into an emotional state so intense that one forgets about what’s going on around them is powerful and profound, and this piece in some ways is a manifestation of that condition. This concept can be applied to a huge variety of emotions; it’s not something that only applies to a person in mourning. It concerns people consumed with joy, love, focus, determination, etc. But the difficult part of this is reconciling that state (whether good or bad) with the outside world, because no matter how profound one’s internal complexities are, reality is still waiting to build or erase them.