What does it take to create great music? In this case a visionary inventor and a virtuoso champion of new music and then a composer who is swept up in the excitement created by the two.
That’s what happened in 2015 when I decided to take a year off from recording engineering and just focus on composing. The best way to do that I thought would be to up sticks and move to a new city. A new country even. I found a beautiful little sleepout, hidden away in a lush garden in Melbourne. It was the perfect place for my studio, as I could make music through the night. Soon after I settled in, I met two remarkable people, violinist Sarah Curro and luthier Paul Davies.
Sarah is a long-time member of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, and she’s been on a mission to support younger composers by commissioning new music for her solo violin show VOLUME. She immediately told me to meet her husband Paul Davies who has been working on a new type of electric violin. He’d also been working on a range of semi-acoustic instruments. His first ever semi-acoustic double bass is the go-to instrument of Bob Dylan’s bass player Tony Garnier.
Paul Davies and his prototype of the electric Spur violin.
Of course I was intrigued. And as soon as I stepped into Paul’s workshop my mind was blown. Firstly by what a fabulous person he is, and secondly by how fantastic that prototype of the electric violin is. There’s an instrument that looks like a normal violin, but at the same time it looks modern, sleek, gorgeous and fresh. And the sound is fantastic. Until now electric violins have suffered from a muffled sound, they lacked overtones that characterise violins. It’s different with electric guitars. They have a richness in tone that electric violins lack. Until now, thanks to Paul’s new prototype. Paul set up a brand, Spur Violins, and is now marketing the semi-acoustic violin. Have a look at the website. How beautiful is that instrument!? www.spurviolins.com
So there I was. Inspired. I went home and immediately set to compose a piece for Sarah and the electric Spur violin. I’ve never been interested in solo violin music. And that hasn’t changed. So I decided to write something for violin and piano. But I was writing for the electric violin and I was going to use a lot of effects like a wah-wah pedal (think Jimi Hendrix), a chorus and a lot of delay and reverb. It felt wrong to just use a normal acoustic piano. What would be the point of marrying up those two instruments? So of course I was going to go fully electric and chose the Fender Rhodes electric piano.
In case you don’t know what the Fender Rhodes sounds like, I can tell you that you do know. It has been used by the who’s who of rock, pop and jazz since the sixties. Led Zeppelin, Herbie Hancock, Miles Davis, The Doors, Chick Corea, Stevie Wonder, Steely Dan. The list is endless.
Sarah Curro playing a beautifully painted semi-acoustic Spur violin in Paul Davies’ workshop.
And what a marriage of sound that was. The piece poured out of me in one night. The next day and night I spent fine-tuning it and then showed Paul and Sarah. They were blown away, which made me immensely proud. Paul was speechless because it was always in the back of his mind to use the Rhodes with the electric violin. But he didn’t tell me about it. The lush, atmospheric sound of the piece was exactly what he had been hearing in his head all that time he had been working on the prototype. Great minds think alike, hahaha.
Sarah premiered the piece at her next show and since then played it a few more times. It’s so gratifying to see people touched by my music. And this piece, which I called Atmosphere, proved to be striking a chord with the audiences. Its big soundscape and soaring melodies draw you in and transport you to a different place.
Atmosphere set me on a new path. I was so inspired and just had to go on writing more works like that. That’s how I ended up with a whole album of music for the electric Spur violin. I spent 2019 recording with Sarah and mixing the album and it’s going to be released mid 2020. I can’t wait to share it with you: Watch out for the release of the album: Curious.
But in the meantime, here’s an interview I gave on Radio New Zealand’s Upbeat programme with RNZ host Eva Radich. That was in 2015, before the first performance of Atmosphere. At that time the piece had the working title Überlegen, which we mentioned in the interview. You can hear the piece at the end. Enjoy.