Exotic: A Musical Guide to the Birds of Papua New Guinea
© 2013, MaLoMaLo Press
for Clarinet and Recorded Material
I. Largo - Con Vivo
II. Lazily
III. Con Vivo
Duration: 12:15 min.
Program Notes:
I have been conceptualising Exotic for some time now, in response to my father's request for me to write a piece for him to play on clarinet. As I started thinking more seriously about the piece, I asked him if he wanted creative input regarding any element of the piece, and he mentioned that he loved the calls of the birds in the lowlands of Papua New Guinea, the country in which we were living at the time. We were unsuccessful in our attempts to record those birds, but I found recordings of many lowlands birds on the internet, and owe thanks to Nick Athanas and Niels Krabbe for allowing me to use their recordings in this piece. This movement uses an interactive approach between the birds and the clarinet; the clarinet imitates many of the motivic gestures in the birds.