Fragments

Instrumentation: Solo Violin

Composition date: 2021

Duration: 6 minutes

I've always loved jazz trumpeter Miles Davis' playing, especially in his 1950's and early 1960's groups that interpreted standard popular songs. I remember at college transcribing Miles' solo on Someday My Prince Will Come. My transciption of that solo taught me not only about Miles' beautiful choice of notes, but also his very personal use of space, the silence between the notes. Fragments plays with that idea of space, allowing the music to breathe and frame a tableaux of musical scenes. Ideally, the music would be heard in a large hall or church where the acoustics would become an integral part of the music, allowing the performer to work with the natural reverberations and determining the duration of the pauses and silences that are written into the music. Peter Walton, February 2021