David Long: Ash and Bone
Album image from Karl Maughan’s Turnstone
Composer David Long’s new album Ash and Bone began life during New Zealand’s 2020 lockdown. NZSO conductor Hamish McKeich had asked Long for a piece for a virtual “Shed Series”, and he wrote for flutist Bridget Douglas, harpist Carolyn Mills and himself on percussion, using amplification and other electronic effects. “The NZSO dropped off recording gear at their houses,” Long tells me. “I gave them a mock-up of the work, and the world premiere of The Long, Long Walk streamed from our three separate homes.”
Long’s highly original music for film, television and contemporary dance is widely praised. He composed extensively for dancer Douglas Wright, describing the choreographer’s artistic courage inspiring and exhilarating. Long’s many film successes include winning APRA Silver Scrolls in 2018 and 2020 for “best original score” for the documentary film McLaren and the BBC’s television series of Eleanor Catton’s The Luminaries.
Composer David Long
…enormously appealing music.
Photo credit: Grant Maiden
While a member of the high-energy group Six Volts in the late 80’s, Long discovered Duke Ellington. “He’d harmonise a bass clarinet two octaves above with a muted trumpet. I thought all the colours were incredible.” He suggests everyone is synesthetic. “And I think, as well, about whether I want the music to be like spray paint or oil paint, a really smooth texture or seeing the brush strokes.”
The NZSO Shed Series didn’t continue but meanwhile Long wrote the works that make up his new album. He added clarinets, tuba, trumpet, more percussion, his own banjo, electric guitar, electronic effects and synthesisers, creating astonishingly rich colours and textures. The players in the ensemble are top professionals, most from the NZSO and including Riki Gooch, his frequent collaborator, on percussion and electronics.
The Ash and Bone ensemble
Photo credit: Grant Maiden
The opening Underground is a train-like journey, melodic fragments against oscillations, harmonies a little acidic. The multi-layered Ash and Bone is a striking contrast, but again the lines are full of individual timbral character. The whole album shows Long’s unfailing sense of pace and momentum, shapes shifting, quirky interjections with occasional whimsical humour.
How much of it is improvised? “Not much, actually,” he says. “In Water the Earth I gave Carolyn [the harpist] groups of notes and then I directed things by saying on the score ‘flute and clarinet do crazy flurries around these notes’. Everyone went into this dreamy place.” The musical effect is beautiful, a call and response effect from the instruments within a continuous rain-filled texture that fades into silence.
The album cover image for “Ash and Bone” is by Long’s friend, painter Karl Maughan. “I showed Graham Kennedy, our recording engineer, that image,” says Long, “and he said, ‘oh, that makes sense’. He had it sitting there the whole time we were mixing.” The painter has layered botanical colours with clarity and subtle overlapping around a path inviting that long walk. It’s hard to imagine a more perfect visual expression of Long’s enormously appealing music.
Ash and Bone David Long (composer) Carolyn Mills (harp), Andrew Jarvis (tuba), Max Carter (trumpet), Rachel Vernon (bass clarinet), Pat Barry (clarinet), Bridget Douglas (flute), Riki Gooch (percussion, electronics) David Long (synthesiser, banjo, electronics and electric guitar). Available from Rattle.
Read more about the NZSO’s virtual Shed Series in 2020 here.