The final movement of the Flower power Suite is a swing blues. (.) the opening is almost Gospel-choir with lush harmonies and plenty of subdominants. the flattened blues scale soon finds itself pushed centre-stage and the rhythm leans more and more until the bar-lines creak under the strain and a jazzy feel sits astride the square bass notes and sways gently. Stab-brass chords give a fanfare effect before that lazy blues takes over again.
And then something I didn't expect. Aggressive triplet runs, piling one on another, and there's almost progressive jazz poking its head through. Short, punchy dissonance and silence, over and over again. A is pitched against Bb and B and then they're gone. An ascending bass line carries the music upwards and grinds remorselessly against the repeating triplets. This is exciting stuff! Economical writing combined with just the right chords mean that this is more late night than early morning. Perhaps this is after all early morning as one spills out of a jazz club, not early morning as one spills out of bed...
This is not an easy piece, but it's refreshingly different and very evocative.
The parts have easy page turns and there are just the right number of helper accidentals in the score, indicating the way through the mix of sharpened and flattened scale notes.
This is a nicely packaged piece of music. It deserves a place on the shelves of those who believe that there's more to modern music than either a twee melody on a bouncy rhythm or those strange feats of contortion that pull every sort of noise from a guitar except musical ones.
Derek Hasted (Classical Guitar Magazine)
