Graham Fitkin.
Fitkin has a wide oeuvre. He has written for orchestras, chamber orchestras, ballet companies, dance companies and art installations, for which he used traditional instruments, electronics and sound recordings. Besides composing, he’s also active as a performing musician in his own Graham Fitkin Band together with harpist Ruth Wall in the FitkinWall formation. Fitkin’s work is roughly categorized as post-minimalisism. The music is layered and complex, but at the same time accessable because it’s tonally euphonious.
Nevertheless it uses the Western harmonies in a different way than people are used to in classical music. There’s also a continuous pulse with repeating patterns, which is one of the characteristics of post-minimalism.
The composer regards his own work as abstract. In the 19th century romance, composers were keen to express extra-musical phenomena in so-called programme music and symphonic poems. For Fitkin it’s the music for the music’s sake. For most pieces this is true, but ever so often there’s a reference to an extra-musical idea: ”to blow off some steam” or ”venting” via an expression by a saxophone quartet, nostalgia and a tragedy in an opera, or using samples and electronics to make a statement against the use of music as a torture method like they did in the prison camp of Guantanamo Bay.
Judge for yourself in this broadcast with a selection from the work of composer Graham Fitkin.
Playlist:
1. “Vent”, Lunar Saxophone Quartet from the album “Flux”, Signum Records, SIGCD 227.
2. “Battery People”, FitkinWall from the album “Still Warm”, GFR GFCD 060706.
3. “Close Hold”, FitkinWall from the album “Still Warm”, GFR GFCD 060706.
4. “Harm Done”, FitkinWall from the album “Still Warm”, GFR GFCD 060706.
5. “Spill”, o.a. Simon Haram from the album “Mono’Dia”, Sospiro Music Ltd. SOSSH100414.
6. “Passing”, Simon Haram from the album “Mono’Dia”, Sospiro Music Ltd. SOSSH100414.
7. “K2”, FitkinWall from the album “Kaplan”, Black Box BBM1086.
8. “K6”, FitkinWall from the album “Kaplan”, Black Box BBM1086.
9. “Chain of Command”, Powerplant from the album “24 Lies Per Second”, Signum Records SIGCD313.
10. “Trace”, FitkinWall from the album “Lost”, GFR GFCD090915.
11. “Remnant”, FitkinWall from the album “Lost”, GFR GFCD090915.
12. “Mapping”, FitkinWall from the album “Lost”, GFR GFCD090915.
13. “Vamp”, Graham Fitkin Band from the album “Vamp”, GFR GFCD 091216.
14. “Hard Fairy”, Simon Haram, Graham Fitkin en Ruth Wall from the album “Frame”, Black Box BBM1055.
15. “Bob”, ft. Simon Haram from the album “Alone…”, Black Box Music BBM1018.
16. “Pam & Jim & Jim & Pam”, Simon Haram from the album “Alone…”, Black Box Music BBM1018.
“Watching”, ft. Simon Haram from the album “Alone…”, Black Box Music BBM101
