No. 31

Written for the Dutch trumpet virtuoso Marco Blaauw with financial support from the Fund for the Creation of New Music. This piece, the third in a series of NONcerti, is comprised of three movements: 1) Burlesque (with long scale) A burlesque, ending in a scale which gathers momentum as it descends to the lowest notes of the lowest instrument. 2) Elegy for Alfred Schnittke An elegy for the Russian composer who's music I 'discovered' for myself during an afternoons listening in a record shop, only to read of his death in the evening paper that very day. 3) Rhapsody I was once accused by an angry colleague of writing rhapsodic music - for him this was obviously a terribly insulting description, but I took a liking to the idea and this is the result. Richard Ayres