Date of composition: 2019
Overall duration: c. 8 min
Format: alto & bass flutes (one player) with electronics
Premiere: 9 February 2019, Bangor, Wales (UK)
Richard Craig
Pontio Centre, Bangor
Programme note: (download as PDF)
Earthline is a companion to my acousmatic piece Skyline (2016). The earlier work develops and extends the sound of a Blackbird recorded in my garden at dawn one summer morning. In Earthline, eleven individual phrases from these same Blackbird recordings are slowed down and lowered in pitch, revealing the alien world of their inner detail and bringing them in the range of alto and bass flutes. This is the source material for the flautist, who evokes the distinctive vocal shapes and strange colourations of the Blackbird’s song using a variety of highly virtuosic colouristic techniques.
Earthline was composed for flautist Richard Craig, and premiered by him at the Bangor Music Festival in 2019.