Reflections (1985)for piano and 3 percussion Ross Edwards Reflections is a delicate, trance-like meditation on intimate minutiae from the sound environment of Central Eastern Australia. Dominant among these are strands of insect sounds, whose perverse overlapping patterns and mysterious periodicty have for many years captivated the composer's imagination and played a crucial role in his search for a transcendental language beyond the rhetoric of Western Art Music. The characteristic textures and sonorities of Reflections are in many ways related to those of Edwards' instrumental sextet Shadow D-Zone (1977), most notably through the interplay of keyboard percussion and piano, whose sound is often tempered by simultaneously struck ideophones such as cowbell, gongs and tamtam. Reflections was commissioned by the Synergy Percussion Ensemble, who first performed it in the Sydney Opera House on July 7 1985.
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© Jonathan Mills
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