Space Junk

Space Junk

Music of Space and Time

Introduction

Music on this album transports the listener to other worlds. Imagine astral bodies in many different forms, colours and shapes.  Travel back in time to remember the joy, play and innocence of childhood with the two Percy suites, and hear the story of the Royal Flying Doctor Service, now over 90 years old, told in music. An ancient Chinese travelling band and the art of knitting Japanese-style are in there as well.

With a recently revised edition of Ann Carr-Boyd’s collection of astral pieces ‘Star Burst’ – now including a new work ‘Shooting Stars’  –  I am proud to present the suite in its entirety.  Originally known as ‘Look at the Stars’ and composed in the 1980’s, individual pieces have achieved popularity, but I believe that every single one is a masterful entity and all deserve a place in the sun. As a whole too, it’s possible to fully appreciate the extent of Ann’s inventiveness.

Ann Carr-Boyd’s two ‘Percy’ suites were inspired by, you guessed it, our Covid poodle Percy. By sending a steady stream of his antics and discoveries as little vignettes, Ann could readily transform them in her inimitable way, into music. The Percy suites are allegedly for children, but like a lot of good children’s music, enjoyed even more by adults.

Flying West has been released several times on different albums. As we near the tenth year since Ann composed it for us, I make no apologies for releasing it again, this time in a setting of musical story-telling and visual images. Live the story of the famous Flying Doctor in this quirky, light-hearted music.

Diana Blom’s three character pieces were originally written for other keyboards – The Travelling Chinese Orchestra for piano, both Cat’s Play and Japanese Knitting for toy-piano. They transfer successfully to harpsichord, an instrument never reticent in snaffling others’ music. Judge for yourself whether the harpsichord doesn’t do justice to these marvellously outrageous pieces.

Diana Weston

Star Burst

This collection of fifteen pieces was inspired by my lifelong interest in astronomy. Each piece is named after a celestial object and in the music I have tried to highlight the character of each one – or rather how it appears to me.

Shooting Stars : Shooting stars are always one of the most memorable sights in the night sky and can be caused by anything from a meteor shower to space junk falling from the sky. For anyone lucky enough to see an event like this, it becomes a lifetime memory. In this piece I have tried to capture the serenity of the night sky with the stars shining brightly. Suddenly the scene changes when a random flash of light streaks through the sky and this vision immediately brings the universe and the night sky closer to us. I have tried to mirror this in my music – the serenity of the sky suddenly changed by streaks of light.

Pluto : Pluto is a planet in the outer reaches of our solar system and more recently has been demoted to the status of a Dwarf Planet. I have tried to convey a sense of loneliness for this faraway celestial object.

Mars is the mythical god of war and a planet often referred to as the Red Planet – it was relatively easy to find an appropriate way to paint Mars in a musical fashion.

The Sun: The centre of our solar system and a central part of life in ancient Egypt when Egyptian people worshipped the sun-god Ra – translated into music by me as images of boats on the Nile bordered by palm trees and grasses swaying in the breeze.

Mercury: closest planet to the sun and in mythology associated with Mercury the swift messenger.

Pulsar (in the Crab Nebule): A regular radio signal coming from a star in the massive Crab Nebula.

Spiral Galaxy NGC 4565: Spiral Galaxies are beautiful objects in the night sky. I have tried to picture their swirling circular shape in this piece

Earth: Depicting our own planet I found an African folk song ‘Namunkanga’ emanating from the source of the Nile.

Sombrero Galaxy NGC 4594: When looking at images of the Sombrero Galaxy it is not hard to see how this name arose, and which evoked accompanying musical ideas for me.

Phoebe: A distant satellite of Saturn which strangely moves in retrograde motion to the rotation of Saturn. It was an interesting exercise for me to make some retrograde musical patterns in this piece.

Fiji Moon: When visiting Fiji I saw a wonderful red moon rise over the ocean accompanied by the sound of a local band, whose harmonies I tried to recreate here.

Stefan’s Quintet: A cluster of five galaxies – very distant but can be seen with a powerful telescope.

Quasar Pks 2142 – 75: Quasars are the most massive objects in the sky – an extremely luminous active galactic nucleus containing a supermassive black hole. Quasars inhabit the centres of active galaxies. I have written some heavy chords to indicate the unbelievable weight of such an object.

Star Clusters: Seen through a telescope, a star cluster surrounding the Milky Way is incredibly beautiful – thousands of pinpoints of light spreading out from a central point. Very hard to translate musically, but I have used splashy clusters of notes and spiky note patterns to illustrate the special place of star clusters in the sky.

Saturn: Closer to home, a giant planet in our solar system and with its surrounding system of rings, it seems to float through the sky. I have indicated sustaining pedal throughout to allow the piano to merge chords into one another.

Ann Carr-Boyd rev. July 2020

Two Suites for Piano Duet

Percy Crosses the Nullarbor

Percy goes to Mudgee

Percy is a small black poodle. In March 2021, when very young, he travelled by car right across Australia with his owners. He also visits their sheep property regularly in Mudgee, where he has revealed a talent for mustering sheep!

I was so taken with the image of this very small and lively dog in the vastness of the Australian landscape that I have tried to translate my thoughts into music in not too serious mode.

It has been enjoyable to write in this way, seeing the world through the eyes of a small dog – chasing rabbits, exploring intriguing holes, sleeping by the fire, and much more.

Each suite contains four sections.

Percy Crosses the Nullarbor

It’s a long way . . . . ., The Stars at Night . . .. Getting to know the Nullarbor . . . ,Made it to the other side . . . . . !

Percy goes to Mudgee

Mustering sheep . . . . . Down by the river . . . . . Chasing rabbits . . . . . By the fire . . . . .

Notes by Ann Carr-Boyd, July 2020 (Percy crosses the Nullarbor) and January 2022 (Percy goes to Mudgee)

Flying West

In writing this work I fulfilled a long-held desire to write music inspired by the Australian outback.  With husband Peter I travelled to Broken Hill and saw first-hand the Royal Flying Doctor base and was told about the work carried out daily by this organisation.  We then travelled to Tibooburra and explored many of the areas in the northwest corner of New South Wales, where Peter’s mother grew up on a vast property called Mount Poole.

Ann Carr-Boyd 2015

Cat’s Play was written for Antonietta Loffredo and the inaugural toy piano festival, ‘Music as Play ‘The Toy Piano Takes the Stage’, held in Como, Italy, July 2019. All the pieces submitted to the festival were played by Antonietta. Two cats were particularly in mind when Cat’s Play was written – Felix the Siamese and Alessandro Scarlatti’s Fugue in G minor (K. 30, L. 499), the ‘Cat’s Fugue’, which is quoted in Cat’s Play. A short, theatrical piece between the keyboard and three toys, Cat’s Play is for 25-key toy piano, castanet, horn and bell.

The Travelling Chinese Orchestra. This short descriptive piece came from a visit to a Chinese restaurant in Canberra, the menu of which was printed on pages from an Asian arts magazine.  My menu pictured eight Chinese earthenware musicians on horseback from the Tang dynasty 618-907.  All the mounted musicians have moustaches and are strikingly dressed in beige hoods, red robes, with red trousers tucked into black boots.  There are two drummers with their drumsticks, one musician playing the fife (dizi), one playing the flute (xiao), another the transverse flute (yuè), one on pan-pipes (paixiao), one on harp (konghou) and one on mouth organ (sheng).  

When a travelling Chinese orchestra is passing through, the drums then the cymbals are heard in the distance, sounding out of the silence.  Next, the high woodwind ring out.  As the orchestra moves closer the melody is heard, the pitch rising gradually until the players are present, playing at full volume.  The melody, using an old Chinese scale, is accompanied by the percussion.  As the orchestra rides past, the pitch of the melody drops a little and as the distance increases, eventually only the high woodwind and finally drums can be heard.

Japanese Knitting, for toy piano (C to C) and 3 knitting needles knits together fragments of Sakura, a well-known Japanese traditional song, with the sounds, patterns, pleasure and frustrations of knitting. Like Japanese knitting patterns, the piece uses a short form to convey a lot of information.

Diana Blom