Hazel Leach : Composer

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Music for concertina

Webworks

for concertina and piano.

I wrote "Webworks" in 2001 for the concertina-player Pauline de Snoo. In recent years she has been re-inventing the english concertina as a contemporary performance instrument and building up a whole new repertoire of concert pieces. This piece was composed for her final examination concert at the Fontys Conservatorium in Tilburg (NL). A link to Pauline's website in included below.

The title is a reference to the World Wide Web (www): the music is more specifically inspired by the procedures underpinning an e-mail. The titles of the 4 parts refer to this: "Preferences", "Re: Invitation", "Dear P.", "You have mail".

Although (obviously) an e-mail consists of a heading and content (read: a musical theme...) it also contains hidden instructions for fragmenting the information into bit-chains, routing them through the web and reconstituting the whole piece on arrival. I'm still somewhat amazed by this technology, and translating the processes into music was good fun. Some of the hidden "instructions" were inspired by Ives (harmonic implosion- a melody is contracted to a chord), others are rhythmic (the chains of 2.3.2.2.2 rhythms in the final movement).

Length: 10 minutes.
Information about ordering the music can be found on the "contact" page- see link above.

I've included .pdf samples from the 1st and 4th movements (see links below)
The mp3 samples from the 1st, 3rd and 4th movements are taken from a performance by Pauline in May 2004 with Chris van de Kuilen on piano.

Circles

for solo concertina

These three short solo pieces started life as educational exercises for Pauline's concertina method. They are arrangements of pieces I wrote for children's choir "Cirkels in de Tijd" with Dutch lyrics (link- to Dutch page- below). However, they seem to have become popular solo-pieces in their own right- a pleasant surprise for me! Who knows, perhaps I'll get round to arranging the other eight...
I'm including "Circles 1" both as a pdf file and as a midi mp3 file - as I said, it's short: 1'20".

All three pieces can be ordered via the 'contact' page (link above)

Trios

for voice, concertina and piano

These 2 songs were originally written for bigband, and have both been recorded by The United Women's Orchestra. "Self-Portrait" is a slightly philosophical song about growing old, "A Sting in the Tale" is about roots..
Both pieces are approx. 5 minutes long.
Both songs have their own webpages, with detailed background information, lyrics and leadsheets (see catalogue page for links). Included here are .pdf samples of the trios.
Links
Webworks: Preferences (pdf: bars1-23) Webworks: You have mail (pdf: bars87-98) Pauline de Snoo's website
mp3: Webworks bars18-31588K
mp3: Webworks bars 52-62616 Circles 1. pdf file trio: A Sting in the Tale
mp3: Webworks bars 87-100532K midi mp3 file: Circles 1 (1.2 Mb) trio: Self-Portrait

Information about buying the music can be found on the contact page- see link above.

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