Todd Harper: Rattlesnake Song #2
Things don’t look good for me to create more new piano recordings in my home studio in the immediate future, so I’m going to have to stall — but I figure I might at least stall with something good!
This is a piece from the most recent Keys Please! concert. It adds a nice little bit of variation to the blog: not only is it not Cantrell, Chopin, or Brahms, but … it doesn’t even have a piano in it! (Yes, I’m really going out on a limb.) It’s also stylistically different from what I’ve published so far, hopefully in a refreshing way.
It’s from my buddy Todd. He says of it:
[This song] I have to share credit for, because I did not write the words. I was at my mom’s at Thanksgiving, and I found some old articles my dad wrote when he was alive, for the newspaper, the Forest Lake Times — and they’re about snakes. … This is about an expedition he took, and I thought, “This would set really well for cello and voice.”
Todd uses some inspired bits of semi-improvised sound painting, beautifully performed by Jacqueline, to accentuate the miniature drama in Carei’s reading of this little story. I hope you’ll find it as charming as I do!
Todd Harper
Rattlesnake Song No. 2
Jacqueline Ferrier-Ultan, cello
Carei Thomas, narration
Download (3:35 / 4.2 M)
Music lovers take note: Jacqueline plays in a wonderful cello duo called Jelloslave, and they have a new CD!
I do like the piece. The narrations do well to add clarity and understanding. How long did it take for you to write this? Good work!
Hi Phillip
Actually, unlike most pieces with “words", this took remarkably little time. I had a picture in my mind’s ear of parts which had “tonal” centre, and a ” textural” centre. So that’s how it worked.
It took about 3 days, of off-and on, then a revision after the first rehearsal.
thanks for listening.
todd
None of this changes the fact that rattlesnake meat is delicious! It makes the best chili you ever had.
www.rattlesnakerecipe.us