David Bremner

I’ve been playing lots of gamelan recently with the National Concert Hall ensemble Kyai Jati Roso. Looking forward to collaborating with UCD Gamelan and Gamelan Nua this year for a project exploring the combination of gamelan with pipe organ. This piece I wrote recently for the Happy Days festival fringe in Enniskillen has a definite gamelan influence, it’s a sort of text lancaran. Performance by myself (organ) and Elizabeth Hilliard (soprano).

The cover of the CD l’air du temps/the spirit of the times by myself and the piper Mark Redmond. The beautiful design is by Clare Lynch; it incorporates architectural motifs from Christ Church Cathedral Dublin, where the CD was recorded over four nights, attempting to dodge interruptions by city-centre traffic and seagulls.

Here is the first track, Amhrán na Leabhar. This type of arrangement is an attempt to add my own take on these self-sufficient melodies, not by ‘harmonising’ them, but by composing a new melody that complements the patterns of the original.

The CD is available from Tower Records, Claddagh Records, Christ Church Cathedral shop, or by emailing bealfestival@gmail.com

And here is a document explaining some of the aesthetic context and unusual techniques involved in the guarded tourist. It was written for a presentation I gave at the Music and/as Process conference in Canterbury, summer 2014.

A video of a performance by Elizabeth Hilliard of logic ballad #2: The guarded tourist makes the guide the test. It is a dramatic ballad built entirely from three-note phrases related to each other by permutational processes. This is intended to be the enaction of a constantly developing thought process.The text was assembled from a pool of 25 words:

across awake coast continue detonate eyes faded fear from hid if into latitude night paradise reefs since slowly story swung together turned underneath view you.

The basic structure is the following:

Caption
Setting the scene
First Action
Aria/Reflection
Second Action
Memory of Initial Scene

The background to this piece was my interest in improvised process music; more information on this can be found on the Compositions/Improvised Process Music page.