Arizona Friends of Chamber Music
Commissioning program

ROSS EDWARDS

"Tucson Mantras" for Percussion Quartet, String Quartet, Didgeridoo

Available on our Festival CD collection Premiered by the Synergy Percussion Quartet, Lara St. John, Ian Swensen, Paul Coletti, Antonio Lysy, William Barton. March 2008. Commissioned by: AFCM. Sponsored by: Karen Sternal, Richard and Judy Sanderson, Jean-Paul Bierny and Chris Tanz.

The composer's website: http://www.rossedwards.com/

Ross Edwards on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ross_Edwards_(composer)

Performances: Sydney Recital Hall, by the Synergy Percussion Quartet, William Barton, the Grainger String Quartet.

Published: Ricordi (London)

Ross Edwards writes:

"In 2006, Peter Rejto took part in a large-scale performance of 'Tyalgum Mantras' at the Four Winds Festival on the east coast of Australia, which also involved William Barton and the Synergy Percussion. When inviting me to compose another mantra piece to close the 2008 Tucson Winter Chamber Music Festival, Peter specified the need for a celebratory conclusion. Accordingly, the long, ruminative, often intense string passages that follow the opening mantras have the effect of accumulating energy which joyfully explodes in the work's expansive conclusion.

The texture of 'Tucson Mantras' abounds with nature symbolism - shapes and patterns abstracted from birdsong and the mysterious sound world of insects and frogs. Drones remember the earth and there is music reference, by way of personal symbols, to an Earth Mother archetype that pervades all my work."