BY THOMAS GREEN
Thomas Green is the composer of Turbine – Collusion’s latest chamber ballet. It will premiere at MELT Festival on 23 May. Here, Thomas writes about and visually represents his experience of composing this work for violins and live electronics.
Who am I?
All my life, I’ve been trying to work out what my music is.
Some people know from early on exactly what music to make. I didn’t. I am still not really sure. Even still, inch by inch, I’m starting to find a sound which is all my own.
Turbine is about struggling with identity.
Gareth Belling, our choreographer, explores intimacy, power dynamics, and gender, in this work. So the music needed to be: disparate things, coming together.
So I looked for broken things.
Tarnished, old – with their own sound. I visited local markets where they run steam engines, and I captured those sounds.
I collected a number of old toys and recorded them.
I broke some electronics (doing so often didn’t make any useful sounds, but I enjoyed it).
I prepared a piano (again).
I recorded a harmonium of indeterminate age, and a hundred year old Swiss music box.
In all my electronic music, when I collect sounds in this way, they come together as one single palette. I use my computer and samplers to pull them apart, into their micro elements (their grains).
Benjamin Greaves – one of Collusion’s violinists – visited me.
We recorded a host of unusual sounds generated by the violin, in every which way (save the manner you’d normally play it).
To this palette, I added a number of analogue synthesizers. Mainly because they’re fun.
The violin melodies woven around and through the electronic part are intentionally anachronistic; harking backwards centuries perhaps, but also backwards in my own life – my earlier musical experiences being bound up with string and wood.
Together, these disparities, and scuffed and fragmentary elements, provide a means to reach into the centre. To see a way through.
Turbine is happening this week in Brisbane, beginning 23 May. Details for the event can be found here.
This blog was originally published by Thomas Green. You can visit his website to learn more about his work.
