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RVW Trust back the Premiere

on July 02 2011, by Jo

We are delighted to announce that we have received further funding to commission Bruce Nockles to write for Bella Tromba.
The Church Stretton and South Shropshire Arts Festival have jointly funded the new work that will premiere on the 2nd August 2011.

Bruce Nockles, the composer of new work, Blast for Four Trumpets and Hand-held Percussion, knows the trumpet well as he has performed some of the greatest new works for trumpet with leading contemporary ensembles The London Sinfonietta and Ensemble Modern.
Gillian Moore, Head of Contemporary Culture at the Southbank Centre, writes of the new work:

Across it’s eight minutes, Blast sets out to create a sense of scale, contrast and dynamism from the Ensemble of four trumpet players.  As well as asking them to play percussion, Bruce Nockles re-imagines how an ensemble of four trumpet players might relate to each other, asking them all to play an equally important role, passing snatches of music back and forth, often at breakneck speed.  This idea is set out at the very beginning of the piece, when the players pass a rhythm around the group on claves.  Nockles, himself a trumpet player, has said that this reminds him of a click track in a studio before the recording begins and, as the “click track” seamlessly transforms into trumpet sounds, the music emerges as an off-kilter dance, with harmonies and rhythms influenced by popular and jazz music. But the composer has clearly also been immersed in the innovations which contemporary classical composers have brought to rhythm and to the ways in which one kind of music can transform into another. 
The hand-held percussion comes back to punctuate the piece a further three times as the musical argument develops.  A short, slow section of richly chordal music puts the spotlight on the harmonic character of the piece, magnifying and simplifying the frenetic activity of the rest of the music.  This gives way to the longest section of the work, where spiky musical machines are contrasted with melting chromatic shapes, as the sounds are filtered through the rapid changing of mutes.  The final section brings back the dance energy of the opening. 
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