Gimme Some Sugar (Clarinet + Piano)
In 2014, I composed Chicken with No Stones, Baby with No Bones for a Speedwriting Competition while working on my Master’s Degree. This piece, for solo clarinet and piano, had to be composed in a very short window (hence “speedwriting”) - and really became a mental exercise in being able to sit down and focus intensely on a single idea.
Having enjoyed the process, I always wanted to go back the project to create a collection of “miniatures” - short character works. Putting myself into the same setting, I embraced a recording of Dock Boggs’, an old-time Appalachian Balladeer, singing his classic tune Sugar Baby. This became the inspiration for this work, which draws on some of the characteristic intervals and tonalities of his melody - but is not intended to be an arrangement of that work.
With luck, this will be the second of a collection of several works.