How Tantalos Got the Blues
for chamber ensemble
Instrumentation: ob, cl in Bb, bsn, hn in F, pno Duration: c. 7 min
Year: 2011
Workshopped in January 2011 by Lontano Ensemble at King’s College London.
Description: One of the composer’s early works, this five-movement chamber piece fuses contemporary post-tonal harmonies and Blues sounds. Each of the short movements offers a fragmented variation on a theme, which itself is only fully stated in the climactic final movement. The work explores the topic of suffering, with each movement named after a famous Blues song, drawing parallels between the suffering expressed in Blues lyrics and Greek tragedy.
Chris Corcoran 