Transcendental Etudes Composed and performed by Christopher Redgate (oboe) with Julian Warburton (drum – track 7) Tracks Transcendental Etudes 1. Winter Winds (solo oboe) 2. High Take (solo oboe) 3. Sting of the Bee (solo oboe) 4. Blow it! (solo cor anglais without reed or crook) 5. Multiphonia (solo oboe) 6. Microboe (solo oboe) Other Works 7. Music for Oboe and Drum (solo oboe and drum) 8. Mean Machine (solo oboe) 9. Big Mean Machine (solo oboe) The music on this album is quite hard hitting. Many of the pieces explore the very extremes of what is possible on the oboe (and sometimes cor anglais) using both extended techniques like extreme high range and circular breathing, and contemporary sounds like multiphonics. The idea is that they are extremely virtuoso in style while at the same time having a very contemporary in sound world. I say ‘composed’ by but many of these tracks sit in that gap between composition and improvisation. The Transcendental Etudes (tracks 1-6) and Music for Oboe and Drum (track 7) all have a plan to them that includes some formal, structural ideas and particular sounds that must be used. The pieces often have rules to work with. The last two pieces are pure improvisation. As you will see from my biography I have spent the last three years redesigning some of the oboe’s key-work. This album was the last album to be recorded on the standard oboe. I have been working on new versions of the Transcendental Etudes that are 'new oboe' specific – so watch this space! I don’t even own a standard oboe anymore! The musical influences behind the pieces are very varied and include painters such as Pollock and Braque, the oboist and composer Heinz Holliger, other virtuoso performers, Braxton, Evan Parker, Coltrane, Coleman etc... I have spent a great deal of my working life exploring the potential of the oboe and especially its upper range, multiphonics and microtonal potential. Alongside these areas I have been keen to extend the technical potential of the instrument. The Transcendental Etudes recorded here are the results of some of my explorations. I designed them to push both the instrument and the performer in different ways. All include circular breathing, which I view as a standard technique on the instrument and all explore sonic resources of the instrument. A number of these works are very popular in my concerts especially Multiphonia, Sting of the Bee and Winter Winds. I have used each of these works in a variety of concerts and sometimes as an encore. I have performed them in jazz clubs and in ‘Classical Concerts’ after a Vaughn-Williams or Albinoni concerto. Audiences really enjoy them. They are, as you will hear very virtuoso in the 19th century understanding of the idea – lots of fast passagework, with the performer demonstrating high levels of technical skill and mastery. However they have a much deeper side to them in that while they are virtuoso and do indeed demonstrate technique they are more about creative activity and the sonic resources available on the instrument. There are many sources for my inspiration for these works and while I would not point to any particular work and say this is inspired directly by a specific musician or painter they however have been influenced by other sources. Reading about and looking some of the paintings of Braque inspired the way in which some of the pieces work structurally: especially his use of collage techniques. Equally, the painter Jackson Pollock inspired some: the energy and rhythm and visual complexity many of these paintings display. On the musical side the saxophonists Evan Parker, John Coltrane and Ornett Coleman have had an influence as has the oboist Heinz Holliger. Equally, Franz Lizst has cast his shadow over the concept behind the idea of the Etudes from his own Transcendental Etudes, in all of their forms! A number of the Etudes move at one and the same time very slowly and very quickly – you will notice very fast finger work using trills and complex combinations of multiphonics while at the same time the textures they create often move quite slowly. It is at these slower moving levels that the collage effect is evident. Most of the Etudes have gone through different stages of development and even now after recording these versions there are new versions, in some ways more highly developed that have emerged. This is possible, and desirable because of the way in which I have notated the works. There is a bit of a progression in the way the pieces appear on the album. Winter Winds uses almost no multiphonics (just a hint) but sets the scene using very fast passage work and circular breathing. High Take explores some of the highest register of the instrument; the range above the usual top notes of the instrument. There are again some fast passages and some microtones in this piece. Occasionally I fall off a high note on the recording – I consider that all part of the action in these works! The earliest work was Sting of the Bee, which I began performing in early versions in the early 2000s. This was first recorded in an early version on the Oboe +: Berio and Beyond (Oboe Classics cc2015). The outline for the work is based on a 19th century virtuoso work by Antonino Pasculli titled Le Api (this is available on Pasculli: The Paganini of the Oboe Oboe Classics cc2006). Instead of using common 19th century gestures in the work I decided to use double and triple trills as a basis – such trills can be used with ordinary pitches and with multiphonics as can be heard in the recording. The piece moves from double trills through to multiphonics in double, triple and even quadruple trills. Blow It! Is a different kind of animal and has its origins in an improvisation I did as an accompaniment to a short film. This uses the cor anglais but with no reed or crook and so it is an exploration of the air sounds available on the instrument. This was great fun to develop! Multiphonia is almost all multiphonics, it uses circular breathing and continues where Sting of the Bee left off. Microboe explores some of the microtonal potential of the instrument. The three pieces at the end of the album are not part of the Transcendental Etude set. Music for Oboe and Drum was written in 2001. Mean Machine and Big Mean Machine are pure improvisations which use all of the techniques explored in the Etudes. I frequently improvise a piece in a concert and these works are typical of what I might do. Recorded in the Concert Room of the Royal Academy of Music on 8.4.12. Produced and recorded by Kirsten Cowie except for Music for Oboe and Drum which was recorded at Kingston University on the 2nd March 2008: David Lefeber recording engineer. Funded by the Arts and Humanities Research council as part of a Creative and Performance Research Fellowship. Cover painting by Mark Rowan-Hull, image by Sisi Burn.