solo alto saxophone
1994
6 minutes

The Evolution of Gorge
I wrote this piece when on holiday at Lakes Entrance on a houseboat. Lakes Entrance is situated between Bairnsdale and Orbost (Victoria, Australia) at a man-made channel that links the Bass Strait and the Tasman Sea with the 400 square kilometre network of inland waterways known as the Gippsland Lakes.

As we sailed around on the open water, we would occasionally head up some of the channels running off to the sides. As the channels became narrower the banks would rise forming steep gorges. The only place to play my saxophone was on the roof of the boat and the music would bounce off the cliff faces resulting in echoes that gradually sped up or slowed down depending on how close we were to the banks.

This is the first piece that I really explored creating electronic sounds acoustically as the saxophonist is required in this piece to recreate these echoes by playing clearly terraced dynamics throughout. Perhaps you can hear sounds the of seagulls from time to time in the piece…