Wild

Program note:
The structure of landscape is infinitesimal,
Like the structure of music,
seamless, invisible….
Nothing like that in language,
However, clouds chugging from west to east like blossoms
Blown by the wind.
April, and anything’s possible. from “Body and Soul II” by Charles Wright

Wild is an ostinato for Intermediate orchestra – a compositional game around the seemingly never-ending tuning note of A. This A persists throughout the piece like an unbroken horizon – not unlike the sea-filled horizon near my home in Fremantle. Around its constancy, I have filled the work with energetic rhythmic interplay, attempting to give each section of the orchestra a small moment in the sunshine above the horizon.

Wild is the second of four works to be completed as part of my composer_connecting_communities residency with the Youth Orchestras of Australia Network. The residency entails travelling to Youth Orchestras around the country, and developing and rehearsing works in collaboration with the participants in those ensembles. The four works together make up a larger work, titled Quadrants¬, with each composition relating to a point of the compass travelled to as part of the residency. The other three works are Exotic for Junior String Orchestra, Deep for Senior Orchestra, and Magnetic for Symphonic Wind Band.

Wild was written for the Adelaide Youth Sinfonia, with added workshop involvement from the SYO Philharmonic. I thank all the musicians in both those orchestras for their energy, skill and enthusiasm and for performing workshop versions of the piece less than 48 hours after sight-reading it, and for their respective conductors to allow me a moment in the sun on the conductor’s podium.