Leo Chadburn, A Secret
Instrumentation
Piano and analogue synthesizer.
Duration: 10 minutes | Written: 2001, revised 2024
Programme Note
I remember having a notion of a kind of musical material that might be very simple yet conceal within itself another kind of material. A repeated chord obscures a melody. A melody implies a harmony. Perhaps I was imagining an aural equivalent of those Magic Eye stereograms that everyone was obsessed with for a moment in the 1990s.
Listening to the piece 25 years later, that attempted illusion is not what strikes me. Instead, the resolute, rising scales now seem uncannily expressive: transparent yet somehow hopeful.
Live Performances
- Tim Parkinson (piano) and Francesca Fargion (synthesizers), 4 July 2024, Music We'd Like to Hear, London
Recording
Appears on the album The Primordial Pieces, performed by Ben Smith (piano) and Leo Chadburn (synthesizers).
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