As a wildlife enthusiast, I devote my compositional devices to this brass quintet suite to explore and illustrate Australian animals and nature through my musical aesthetic considerations. The 4-movement brass quintet suite is unfolded from a fanfarish safari blended with swaying, relaxing bossa nova in the middle. The first movement offers the audience a ticket to the savanna which is home to grazing wildlife and predators. Three featured animals are presented in the following three movements: cheetah, crocodile, and rhinoceros. The second movement takes inspiration from minimalism, aiming to have repetitive musical figures such as repeated notes, arpeggios and descending scales to illustrate cheetah's fur covered in solid black spots and its pouncing gesture when hunting as the fastest land animal. Crocodile is an experimental work that explores the distinctive sound and timbre of trumpets and trombone subsets. Two trumpets use harmon mutes on and off as how a crocodile is diving underwater while the trombone has the opportunity to slide freely like ripples and waves. The last movement is for the rhinoceros and especially for its metaphor tuba. Powerful, strong, and awe-inspiring figure is illustrated by the tuba's calm and deep melody. It also concludes this brass quintet with the spirit of the remarkable qualities that we humans could discover and resonate from animals in the wild.
Premiered May 2024 ‪@sydneycon‬
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