Programme Notes

Well-crafted music comes in all shapes and sizes. As a composer, I cannot help but be influenced by the wide range of music around me-the music I grew up with, the music I know, and the music that comes to me as a new discovery.

I am fascinated with how composers working in different genres can use the same musical materials with completely different results. Toni Tennille's Keeping Our Love Warm--a skilfully written "pop" song that includes elements which step outside that style's very standardised boundaries--provided my starting point. In writing Burn, I took many of the same musical materials and filtered them through my own musical voice. The resulting work, in five connected sections (each rooted in one note of the song's opening pentatonic scale), sounds completely unlike its inspiration, yet shares on some level the same spirit, and pays homage both to the music that shaped my developing ears and to composers everywhere who strive to create good music in all its forms.

Burn was commissioned by Standing Wave. It is dedicated to AK, Becky, Peggy, Allen and Vern; and to Toni Tennille and Daryl Dragon, whose music still plays in my head.