New York

New York (2004), a concerto for tuned percussion quintet and chamber orchestra, was commissioned by L'Ensemble de Basse-Normandie for Percussions Claviers de Lyon and was first performed in Hérouville, near Caen, in May 2004. The orchestra is a small one, here just 18 musicians comprising strings, wind quintet and piano, following the instrumental make-up of L'Ensemble, to give a more or less equal balance with the solo percussion group. The percussion quintet plays throughout almost without a break and while the individual parts are not fiendishly virtuosic the piece makes more purely musical demands on the players in terms of ensemble balance and colour. Although the piece is one continuous movement it falls into a number of distinct sections, each one being characterized by a clear change whether of tempo, energy, instrumental texture in the ensemble or as a whole or just within the percussion group (from beaters to bows for example). As with One Last Bar Then Joe Can Sing, the title came about, in part, through a misunderstanding. I had sent the piece to Normandy, referring to it as a "new work" and was surprised to receive information for the concert series that listed my piece as "New York". So, for me, the New York of the title is not the one in America (which was originally called New Amsterdam of course), but is a small village in Lincolnshire, which I pass through (in less than two minutes) when driving to visit Chris Hinkins, who does the computer setting for all my work, taking the American-sounding Boston-New York road, going from the equally different Boston in to the rural New York. Gavin Bryars.