"Study the past if you would define the future." -Confucius

Ive been doing a load of decluttering, I feel like im buried in stuff accumalated over the years with kids and house moves and endless hoarding in stuffed attic space - its is suffocating - not just physically but emotionally - as ive started the cathartic process of dumping stuff - ive founded boxes of old cassettes, VHS Tape, DCC (Digital Compact Cassette) fro the 90’s. mix tapes old albums, recordings, books, photo’s (the physical type! - what a memory trip!!

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So much ive forgotten, I even found Pauline Oliver’s Deep Listening, a composers sound practice which I didn’t even know I had (and never read!!) - Its like time has folded over and im in the same place but on the other side of a 30 year tunnel of experience! I admit I am guilty of buying books and not reading them - or at least not finishing them - Ive actually never been a big reader but these books are very enticing - especially the Deep Listening - ive banging on about deep listening for a while - probably an instinctive response to this superficial algorithmic playlist culture of shallow listening we seemed to have landed, an unforeseen consequence of the streaming era of recorded music abundance - (watch this space for more thoughts on this!!)[

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One of the books I found - which I do vaguely remember buying is Norman Lebrechts ‘The companion to 20th Century Music’ - I pretty comprehensive and dense tome - Randomly opening up pages reveals endless entries for different composers, some obvious and familiar - but mostly people ive never heard of - its like archeology - who knows exists of their music!!

It occurred to me that this process of discovery is what we have lost in this algorithmic social media age where we are blindly delivered music and ideas in a state passive acceptance - manipulated into receiving an artist, song or work through a multitude of systems of rules, marketing, systems and big tech for someone else’s benefit. This become a self fulfilling feedback loop. As a composer I absorb and find inspiration from the work of artists - as music creators - our sphere of influence flattens and our output narrows to the algorithmic averaging machine - it is our duty as artists to expand sphere of influences! [

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To that end - I was randomly flipping through the pages and thought - lets embrace this analog selection system of music exploration and just select a composer from page I happen to open and dig in - what nuggets of delight will we find that no ones talking about !

How about this page!! [

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My favourite line is for the composer Brian Elias - “…(a) religio-erotic timber enlivens his 10 minute Solomonian Song..”

BUT I have decided Anders Eliasson is my chosen composer to dig into: Anyone who starts a Jazz band at the age of 9 has got to have something interesting going on:[

](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!9SOr!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F3bcb73c1-3203-47b9-856b-3260ccc43fb4_3432x1862.png)Anders Eliasson - Concerto for Alto Saxophone & String Orchestra (2003)

Eliasson is a Swedish composer born in 1947 in Borlänge - he privately studiesd in Stockholm with Valdemar Söderholm and learnt counterpoint and then intensive work on, above all Bach which he is quoted as saying "the highest form of energy with which it’s possible to come into contact." - Anders Eliasson. CD booklet Quo Vadis for Tenor, Choir and large Orchestra, cpo 777 495-2, 2011, p. 17)

There is a fascinating excerpt from the 2006 Swedish documentary Den osynliga verklighetens spegel (The Mirror of Invisible Reality). In this clip John-Edward Kelly, an internationally recognized classical saxophonist, founder of the acclaimed New York based, Arcos chamber orchestra, discusses Collaborating with Eliasson on the the composition Poem. a beautiful atonal piece - [

](https://youtu.be/QVaZ6Y4bXeE?si=81tbWtfSTplgNoIV)John-Edward Kelly discusses his relationship with Anders Eliasson and performs 'Poem' in this video recording.

So I listened, I watched and a found the zone or perhaps permission to make this Piano piece - ive added modelled cello and recorded this after absorbing Eliasson’s work - there is a purity and tonal fluidity which I love - the wonder of analog discovery and inspiration. enjoy!!!

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