Where are the Sounds of Joy?: for Bb Trumpet, Percussion and Piano

Where are the Sounds of Joy? takes its inspiration from Australian Gallipoli warrior, Billy Sing, and re-envisages his life through Kunqu-the mother form of Chinese opera. It reimagines the Gallipoli war from the Chinese perspective with the metaphor from Kunqu in Peony Pavilion, of a broken down garden as the site for dreaming of the ideal lover, used as a parallel of Gallipoli as broken down walls from which one dreams of escape. The work opens and closes with half-sung, half-breath sounds on trumpet alongside emergent 'broken' prepared-sounds on piano, and Mandarin whisperings, whilst pure percussion colours focus to war-like Peking opera gong bursts. A gentle section emerges centering the work with a subdued trumpet plunger tune, related to Kunqu melodic fragments; it sits amidst rich piano resonances, including silent-string evoked half-sounds, and eerie bowed crotales as an imagined dreaming of love. The work ends amidst half-resonances on piano and Mandarin whisperings-"shui jia yuan?" over the lingering Kunqu dream harmony. Instrumentation: Trumpet in Bb, percussion (1 player), piano. Duration: 10 min.