Australian Music Centre | Breaking sound barriers

Work Overview

Night Pieces: Reflections After COVID-19 is a series of musical vignettes, meditating on the myriad experiences marking this year of global pandemic.

SARS-CoV-2 has graphed new heights and depths for us all collectively and individually. My aunt was prematurely taken from us, succumbing to the disease in her aged care facility. We have all reeled at the widespread - and growing number of - deaths and suffering it has caused. The world has polarised, and come together, over associated issues to do with loss, reaction to government action, societal re-structures in day-to-day life, lockdowns, regaining of freedom, human connection, fear, grief and hope.

In this work, Night Pieces: Reflections After Covid-19 for saxophone and piano, I wanted to encapsulate in musical rendering some of my own responses - insights and emotive reactions, that are made more acute during the quiet of the night - to the roller-coaster of the year 2020.

The fourth movement, Elegy, is an arrangement of a movement, An Elegy, from … to enter the dream that includes all dreams, composed for SATB Choir and Piano in 2002 and also arranged as a solo song for Soprano and Piano, to highlight the connection of grief to past events of loss.

Work Details

Year: 2021

Instrumentation: Soprano saxophone, piano.

Duration: 24 min.

Difficulty: Advanced — "Traditional" virtuosic passages at times

Contents note: I. Shelter in Place (5:00) -- II. Isolation (6:30) -- III. Reach-Out (5:00) -- IV. Elegy (3:00) -- V. Hope (5:00).

Dedication note: Dedicated to Duo Eclettico

First performance: by Duo Eclettico at Solicitude (fortyfivedownstairs) on 14 Jan 2021