Wally Gunn | Stones

Stones
2013 (20:00)
Percussion quartet
Written for Mobius Percussion

Videos: Stones (i. Shingle Beach, ii. Schist, Shale, Slate, iii. Semiprecious Gem), by Wally Gunn, performed by Mobius Percussion, 2013.

Stones (20:15)
i. Shingle Beach (06:15)
ii. Schist, Shale, Slate (04:30)
iii. Semiprecious Gem (05:15)
iv. Marble (04:15)

Program Note
Whether in nature or mined and refined by human hands, stone tells stories. Looking closely at stone, we can read the story of its formation; see evidence of the benign and cataclysmic geological events that have shaped it, and the planet as a whole. And looking at the place in which the stone rests can tell us stories of the people who interact with it. The story told by geology is grand but emotionless, while the story of humanity is by comparison modest but powerfully emotional. It is the dialogue between these two stories that seems to give a location a ‘sense of place,’ or even to give a stone object its literal and metaphoric weight. So, an idyllic pebbly shoreline in South-east Asia, a cobbled street under grim London skies, a parched gravel road baked by the Australian sun—the stone in these places holds both the story of the planet and the story of the people. The places themselves possess no intrinsic meaning, but they are deeply meaningful to the people whose stories reside there. The musical material for this piece is gleaned from new and old sketches, and each tells a story of the place and time from which it has been unearthed. They are my own little stories, perhaps meaningful only to me, but in shaping the tone and directing the staging of the songs, I have attempted to recast them as little rituals in the hope that the observer/listener will recognise something meaningful in them too.
– WG, 2014

Instrumentation
3 x glockenspiel
1 x concert bass drum

Mobius Percussion
David Degge
Mika Godbole
Yumi Tamashiro
Frank Tyl
mobiuspercussion.com

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