from 22-24 March, the Microtonal Trumpet project returned to the north of England after a 15 year absence to present works from the RASP, TIME DREAMING and THE YASSER COLLECTION albums, and to give premiers by Richard Whalley and James Williamson- all for the 19-div trumpet!
We are very happy to share the live (video) recording of TIME DREAMING, for three 19-division trumpets (two pre-recorded multitracks) by Donald Bousted. This was the UK premier performed in Manchester (UK) on 23rd March.
YouTube: https://youtu.be/3sFtrsX921k
See Bandcamp to purchase high quality audio recording:
https://stephenaltofttrumpet.bandcamp.com/album/time-dreaming
Time Dreaming..
of Battles past
Cornetts and Sackbuts lurking; muffled ghostly fanfares
of alien soundscapes,
Hampton’s corridors echoing to accompaniments of
Henry’s feasts.
Time Dreaming..
of future,
premonitions of sky and water,
breathing,
journeys
Dreaming of timelessness
Past and future dwellers of Earth existing in a parallel reality.
(Poem: Stephen Altoft)
‘Time Dreaming is a somewhat unusual piece for me. Although I didn’t conceive of it as a pedagogical work, it does clearly have a pedagogical function as part of the project. For that very reason, I wanted the work to be quite slow moving so we can clearly hear the intervallic make up of the chordal flow. I had to find a way to curb that emotional intensity, which often comes out in my work in the form of unusual metres and complex rhythms. And I did that by becoming someone else. I was a composer in the sixteenth century writing in extended third-comma meantime tuning and I was writing for the Queen’s trumpeters. But I had a strange feeling of connection to a future place, a sense that this music would be played in another time and in another space. I was time dreaming.’ (DB)
Donald Bousted was a composer and mixed media artist from the UK. His work was often based on an intimate exploration of one or two instruments, sometimes with electronics, and a smaller number of pieces for chamber and orchestral ensembles. In the work of the last 20 years, he had collaborated with visual artists and sought to integrate elements of film, still images and live art into his oeuvre. He is perhaps best known for his microtonal music, which has been an interest since he was a student. He wrote music using quarter- and eighth-tones and a substantial body of work in 19-division tuning (19 equal pitches per octave).