Jennifer Martin

Programme Note

Monologue – n. a composition put into the mouth of one person, or intended to be spoken by one person.

‘Airborne – A Monologue’ evolved from a chance encounter with the monologues of Hugo Blick, shown a couple of years ago on BBC 2. The story-teller (Joanna Lumley) could tell us a great deal about her character through simply being present on the screen, but through the inclusion of descriptive reference to places or characters beyond herself, the viewer could build up a far more detailed picture of who this individual was. This structure then became the starting point for my work. I liked the idea of there being one sound source which could define itself in musical terms but which could also allude to other, more elusive sounds, as the work unfolded. I wanted to allow the thoughts of one incarcerated to become airborne and to find some release from an enclosed oppression through their own imaginings. The sound is tense and constrained before it finds a freedom for itself. The musical material is derived from the spectral analysis of a series of trumpet multiphonics.

Notes

For Mark O'Keeffe