Australian Music Centre | Breaking sound barriers

Work Overview

This recorded work is a culmination of many years of friendship and performance with the collaborating artists on the CD. They all share a passion for investigating new creative contexts as well as being all extraordinary international artists, musicians and composers.

In TWO STEP, Milliken weaves together a series of part-composed, part-improvised duets with the twelve musicians, all of them recorded in the two cities in which she lives - Brisbane and Berlin. She brought written and improvisatory material to the sessions as well as responding to the momentary "temperature" of the recordings. As the recordings progressed, certain sound worlds evolved which informed the next round of recordings.

The next phase of creating the CD was the montage and re-composition of all recordings by layering sections, creating virtual "duets", linking all of the recording sessions with Milliken. She followed the compositional format of creating a series of episodes centreing around particular instrumental combinations, the periodic layering of text to music and the evolving "temperature" or dramaturgy within the episodes.

The textual layering is reflected and refracted in a series of short poems from Gertrude Stein's 1914 "Tender Buttons" which flow through the recording.

Work Details

Year: 2019

Instrumentation: Voice (spoken), flute, bass flute, clarinet, cor anglais, oboe, sheng, didjeridu, organ, vibraphone, percussion.

Duration: 46 min.

Difficulty: Advanced

First performance: 15 Mar 21. CD release concert, Club der Polnischen Versager, Berlin, Germany.

Includes text from 'Tender buttons' by Gertrude Stein.