Australian Music Centre | Breaking sound barriers

Work Overview

Slavic Grooves and Meditations, (Duos) are a set of relatively simple pieces, which, were in effect sketches, or the seeds for two larger sets of works, both of the same name, but further developed for Trio (flute, violin and viola) which we performed and toured to great effect in Europe, (2014) and then again for Quintet (flute, viola, piano percussion and bass). As these duos, however, they stand complete in themselves.

Work Details

Year: 2016

Instrumentation: Flute, violin.

Duration: 37 min.

Difficulty: Medium — Some movements with "bent" Balkan rhythms, one movement with simple improvisation required...

Contents note: 1. At Peace -- 2. In Motion Entwined -- 3. Seed (Oj Javore) -- 4. Suspende-- 5. Goes the Time.... (Ide Vreme).

Dedication note: "To Carla, who came into my life..........."

First performance: by Carla Thackrah, Romano Crivici — 2013. Woodford Folk Festival, Qld

The composer notes:
Could my music be truly characterised as “Slav”, was I truly a Slav musician? -no, yet, in recent years even more than the past even, my mother, and her sister (my second mother) kept singing me the songs and poems from their childhoods, and I learnt them with her, and came to see that, in spite of all my protestations and denials, there was something that could be characterised as, well, at least a deep familiarity with aspects of the “Slavic soul”....