Australian Music Centre | Breaking sound barriers

Work Overview

During the time I wrote this piece, I was taking jazz classes at the Sydney Conservatorium. I had the fast-changing harmony of bebop, the rhythmic gestures of Dizzy Gillespie and the soulful playing of Miles Davis running through my head. Using this musical landscape as my horizon, I painted in the details and let the piece write itself. After the piece came to fruition, it evoked images of a childhood memory. I grew up in Leura, the Blue Mountains. We lived in a white cottage with a creek that ran down the back of our garden. My little brother and I would regularly make boats out of bark, twigs, paper and cardboard, then race them down the stream. The boats would slow down and speed up with irregularity, weaving their way through narrow streams and then gliding and spinning through large pools of open water. This is where the name Paper Boats came from. However, music is subjective and will evoke different feelings or memory's for different people. I didn't write this piece with my childhood memory in mind, it was simply attached to it afterwards. Therefore, other interpretations of what this piece evokes are just as valid as mine.

Work Details

Year: 2017

Instrumentation: Violin, piano.

Duration: 4 min.

Difficulty: Advanced — AMEB Certificate of Performance

The composer notes the following influences associated with this work:
Igor Stravinksy, Elena Kats-Chernin, Matthew Hindson.

'Paper Boats' was premiered by all 4 finalists of the 2017 Kendall national violin competition.

Written for and winner of the Watermark Composition Prize 2017.