About the Piece
This piece was written for a Hush CD project. The idea for it started when I visited the leukemia ward at the Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne and witnessed what wonderful work Dr Catherine Crock (the head of HUSH Music Foundation) and her team do. That experience was still with me, when a few days later I sat at my piano. I wondered what kind of piece I could write that would be uplifting. I wanted to enter the world of magic and dreams. I imagined a cake adorned with multi-coloured umbrellas. A dance formed in my head, starting with a pattern in harp, marimba, plucked strings and flutes. [Program note by the composer]
Instrumentation:
2 flutes (II=picc)
2 oboes
2 clarinets
2 bassoons
2 horns
1 trumpet
2 trombones
Percussion (2 players)
I=vib/tgl/glsp/3wdbl/cyms
II=marimba
harp
piano
Strings
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About the Composer
Elena Kats-Chernin is one of Australia’s leading composers. Trained in Moscow, Australia, and Germany, her distinctive idiom reflects her unique personal history. Her music often combines chiseled rhythmic pulsation with a bittersweet melodic/harmonic language. Kats-Chernin’s diverse output includes operas, orchestral works, chamber and solo pieces, plus music for dance, film, and theater. [from Boosey & Hawkes – complete biographical information available at the link below]
“Her status as one of this country’s most prolific and consistently innovative composers remains unchallenged… [She] appears to achieve the impossible, straddling the two seemingly irreconcilable camps of intellectualism and accessibility.” – Sydney Morning Herald
Performance Materials
Performance materials are available through Boosey & Hawkes:
https://www.boosey.com/cr/music/Elena-Kats-Chernin-Dance-of-the-Paper-Umbrellas/101529