In 2008, I was living in the leafy suburb of Surry Hills in Sydney, NSW. In April of that year, I decided to produce a small launch party in my apartment for a new Woodwind Trio that I had formed.
I soon discovered that my small apartment on the ground floor of a renovated town house did not have a lot of room to host a concert. With a Woodwind Trio, a jazz vocalist, and a host, I figured I only had enough room to comfortably entertain an audience of four people!
Entitled “Gourmet Soiree,” the evening featured new arrangements of works by Bizet, Stravinsky and Prokofiev, and also included a collaboration with jazz vocalist, Lana Nesnas.
Alongside these works, I decided to compose a short concert piece for Woodwind Trio. The end result was “Figments” - a contemporary piece for Flute, Oboe and Clarinet, which aims to highlight the lyrical nature of these instruments within a modern setting.
A figment is something in our imagination we believe to be real. After a downfall of rain, the alley from the street to my apartment created an interesting illusion which made the walls look taller than they were, and the path appear as if it was floating.
I hope you enjoy performing “Figments,” and am sure that your audience will be much larger than ours was when we first performed it in Surry Hills all those years ago!
