Australian Music Centre | Breaking sound barriers

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Work Overview

The video stills that accompany Ezra Jack Plot are taken from the book, The Snowy Day by American children's book author and illustrator, Ezra Jack Keats. The stills for the composition appear in the same narrative order as they appear in Keats' original work. Nonetheless, the lengths of the stills are no longer at the speed at which a child may read and view the book but move and stall according to the accompanying musical structure. The musical structure in turn is a way of making audible the block-like forms -- in particular the juxtaposition of materials such as linoleum, cloth and paint -- that figure in Keats' illustrations. With this in mind then what matters, particularly for adults, is not that the narrative of the story remains intact but that blocks of childhood memory return.

Artwork from The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats, copyright 1963, appears with the kind permission of the Ezra Jack Keats Foundation.

Work Details

Year: 2007

Instrumentation: Alto flute, bass clarinet, percussion (one player), keyboard and sampler, 2 violins, viola, video projections.

Duration: 12 min.

Commission note: Commissioned by Haupstadtkulturfonds

First performance: by KNM Berlin (Musical group) — 4 Oct 07. Konzerthaus Berlin