16 posts tagged with "news"

I’ve written two new ‘suites’ for big band for the Byres Road Big Band concert in the Blythswood Festival on Sunday 17 May.

I say ‘suites’ – actually each of them is just three pieces, so, as I’ve been joking, two three piece suites, that’s four amchairs and two settees :)

Seriously, though, this music is important to me. The start of my dizzing career in music – culminating in a PhD in composition and my role as Head of PG Music at the Conservatoire – starts with me hearing ‘Take Five’ on the radio sometime in the early 80s and being inspired to teach myself jazz trumpet.

This led me on a journey through a roster of currently-residing-in-the-where-are-they-now-file bands in the Edinburgh area, picking up skills in writing, arranging and music theory as I went.

Through the 90s and 00s I was still gigging as jazz trumpet player, but, creatively, I broadened out into ‘contemporary’ composition: often jazz ‘informed’ perhaps, but not actual jazz writing.

That led on to the PhD which, again, had no echt jazz in it, although the collective away in which I ‘devised’ the music in collaboration with a group of players certainly bears a relationship to jazz practice.

I perhaps shouldn’t say this in public, but unfortunately the PhD kind of killed me, in terms of straight contemporary writing. I’m still proud of the music I wrote during that period, particularly my final show ‘The Other Other Hand’ but, creatively, I found myself at the end of that process kind of fed up with jumping through the hoops of formal ‘composition’.

After the PhD, I escaped for a while into the world of livecoding – certainly a strong improvisatory element there, but, once again not jazz.

Finally, the epiphany. Although my first instrument is trumpet, I’ve also played trombone on and off for many years. After spending the covid years woodshedding on trumpet, it occured to me for some reason to get my bomtrone back from the person I had lent it to and dust it off.

For a lark, I decided one week to go and sit in on trombone for a rehearsal of the Byres Road Big Band.

At the end of that rehearsal I made this kind of tearfully-joyful confession to this room full of musicians – that I really didn’t know at all! – to the effect that it had been one of the greatest musical experiences of my life, and that I finally realised I should have been playing trombone in a big band all along.

So. For the last two years ago I’ve been working with the band, slowly improving my trombone playing to the point where I can almost cope with typical big band repertoire.

Along with that, I’ve been writing for the band, both dusting off and reorganising old pieces and coming up with new ideas.

There is a good deal I could say about that, but this posting is long and rambling enough as it is, so I’ll leave that for next time.

Here’s the gig:

https://www.tickettailor.com/events/jsimonvanderwalt/2125487

Sun 17 May 2026 7:00 PM - 10:00 PM
National Piping Centre, Glasgow
Doors 1900
Band 1930-2200 with interval
£13/£7 concession

After the performance of 'Ha!' last year, conductor Donnie Deacon approached me to see if I had anything else for strings: in particular, if I had any solo works that might be suitable for students. I've been enjoying getting back into writing recently so… rather than dig through the back catalog, I've written two new pieces.

'headlong--->]' is for unaccompanied violin. The score is deliberately written with no bowings, articulations, dynamics or tempo gradations, with the idea that each player has to work the piece out for themselves: to make sense of it in their own way.

'constant' is for viola and piano. In some ways it is a recomposition of 'complicated circumstances' from 'The Other Other' hand: the mystical ascending chord sequence is the same, but the material for the viola completely different to the original clarinet part.

Just mentioning these pieces here for now: I'm waiting for Donnie and I to get a chance to look at them together before I set them in stone.

I recently workshopped Trwiwikrama as part of the introductory gamelan module that I teach at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. It went really well, and I'm starting to think this may turn out to be one of my best pieces.

Why? Well, several reasons:

Its simple but rewarding to play. I've found that I can teach the trombone gesture in about 10 minutes, and after that the players take to it readily. Long controlled glisses on the trombone are not hard to do, but are an interesting change from what trombonists generally find in the repertoire, whether in classical or commercial playing.

For the gamelan players, again, it is simple to teach but not boring to play, while the person playing the electronic effects gets to have fun making strange sounds.

There is no score. This offers just the right amount of flexibility: everyone knows what the gestures are that make up the piece, but there is still openness in how many times each thing happens.

It sounds effective. I think the audience are going to take to it. The overall impression of the piece will be dramatic and unusual without being weird for the sake of weird, and the story of the piece is a good match for how it sounds.

We'll see! First public outing strongly pencilled in for 4 May 2026.

I'm re-doing an (over-fiddly) bit of piano notation:

Finale ca 2003:

MuseScore 4:

The font is in theory the same: using Finale Maestro in MuseScore. I can't decide if I prefer the rather lighter weight lines in Finale or not. Also: it's a stupid bit of notation anyway, but also can't figure out whether the first crotchet in the LH should go before or after the whole note.

Last week I enjoyed being part of a gamelan residency in Poolewe, where Gamelan Nyai Cabe Rawit (Madam Hot Chilli Gamelan) is currently based. Taking part were a members of the local gamelan community, Gamelan Naga Mas, plus some individual players from the England, Ireland, and the United States.

A key part of the residency for me was working with Dr John Jacobs (pictured above right) on compositions for slide brass – trombone and slide trumpet – and gamelan.

Here's an early draft of an as-yet-unnamed piece I'm working on:

slidey_poolewe_02.mp3

Sketch for the piece I'm going to try out next week: gamelan, trombone and slide trumpet.

Obvs this is going to need some explanation in the workshop :)

Update – here's the drum notation:

A very quick SuperCollider demo of some sine waves sliding around in contrary motion. Partly because its a musical gesture I'm interested in using, and partly to see if I can remember anything at all about composing in SuperCollider after a year or so away.

(Which I can :)

One of the earliest compositions of mine that I have documented on this site is How Two Minds Can Know One Thing.

I wrote this the year after I finished my LLCM at Napier University. In retrospect I can see that, by taking on the writing of a three-movement piece for chamber orchestra, I was cementing my ambition to move beyond being a jazz trumpet player and arranger, in order to position myself as someone who was also a 'composer' of 'contemporary classical' music. In that sense, it was succesful: I even managed to get a Scottish Arts Council funding for the work.

However, truth is, with 28 years of hindsight, there always were some problems with the piece. I remain very grateful to the staff and students involved in the original performance, but the truth is not everything came off that well. I suspect the concert was recorded, and that somewhere I might still have the file, but I seem to have deliberately lost it. In fact, I've recently been reminded by someone who played at that concert that the third movement broke down and had to be restarted.

As I approach my 65th year, I'm looking back on my younger composer-self with mixed feelings. I admire the clarity that I had then about the kind of music I was writing and why I was writing it. I'm less fond of the passive-aggressive (or just aggressive!) programme notes, and some of the music seems to me a little short-winded now, not developed at enough length.

Also there has often been a conflict between the rhythmically driven jazz/prog phrasing that is natural to me, and the way that classically trained musicians tend to play these rhythms once they are written down. To take a very simple example, the obvious way for a jazz trumpet player to play this:

Is like this:

Whereas a trumpet player used to playing in a classical context will aim to play both notes equally. To go further: if I was playing that phrase I would stop the 'dit' note with my tongue: which is always wrong in straight trumpet playing! So even if I mark the notes with a tenuto and a staccato, the straight player will still not get it right.

So, to make a long story short, I'm in the process of revisiting and revising How Two Minds, to make it more like the piece it was trying to be.

The first movement I may abandon. The second movement is actually fine as it is, and I've already re-purposed it elsewhere. The third movement I'm in the process of rescoring, moving away from strings and oboe to clarinets, accordion and trumpet, with the aim of getting a more direct jazz/prog sound and a better articulation of the rhythmic material.

Pic below is trying out some of the clarinet material with the help of students from the RCS.

I had a rather wonderful early birthday suprise last week!

Several months ago had I showed my piece 'Ha!' to Andrea Gajic, Head of Strings at the Royal Conservatoire, to see if perhaps the string department would take it on.

Andrea was a little noncomittal, and after broaching the subject with her a couple of times I resigned myself to the idea that it wasn't going to happen.

A couple of weeks ago, I got several reminders from various string students about a concert that was being put on as part of the string festival at the RCS. Thinking nothing of it, I turned up to the concert, where it was announced that there would be a surprise piece on the programme.

So, yes: as a total surprise to me, they played 'Ha!' as the last item on the programme. I was completely taken aback, and, indeed, very moved, not having heard the piece since the first performance 23 years ago.

Update 2025-04-02 recording is now up https://youtu.be/MHGuWfu2u-s

The 12/8 groove in yesterday's sketch has got me thinking about an older piece of mine, the second movement of 'Bridge River Valley':

It occured to me that perhaps the two ideas might be part of the same piece, but now I listen to it my thinking is that actually what I should do is extend the rondo ABA form of BRV into something like ABACA to make it into a more substantial piece.

That would be a biggish job, though, the original notation for BRV was in Finale and very fiddly, so some considerable effort would be needed to redo it in MuseScore before even getting to writing a C section.

Also… how did I compose this?!? I feel like at one point I could almost play some of it, but a long time since I put my hands on a piano with that kind of vigour!