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Audio excerpt (courtesy of Lontano Records Ltd LNT104)

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Mixed Ensemble

Martin Butler

Jazz Machines

Conductor's score and parts on hire

978-0-19-355730-7 07 January 1991

Price: Available on request

This work should be performed in as rhythmically and metrically accurate a way as possible, even in the more lyrical passages.

Forces or Category

Ensemble

Duration

12 minutes

Difficulty

Moderately difficult to Difficult

Orchestration

fl (+picc&alf), cl (+bcl), vib, pn, vla, vc

Programme Notes

Jazz Machines was originally destined to form part of a programme of my music in the 'Summerscope 1990' festival, which was to have been directed by Michael Vyner. Tragically, Michael died before the plan came to fruition; so I feel that this note should acknowledge both his hand in commissioning the work for the London Sinfonietta and his kind support over a number of years.
The unusual scoring of the piece was largely due to practicalities: it was drawn from the other pieces of mine destined for that same 'Summerscope' programme.
For me, there's a nice irony in the title since jazz (of all kinds) is inherently spontaneous, improvisatory and un-mechanical (or so we are usually led to believe). I've tried to create a 'machine jazz'; jazz that machines might play, on the sly, when we're not listening. The references to numerous jazz styles, from the generalised (bebop?) to the particular (Gil Evans?) are fairly obvious, but are filtered through a somewhat bizarre series of rhythmic and harmonic progressions so that their meaning changes, their expression is altered. Although for the most part fast, syncopated, and employing the full ensemble, the music of Jazz Machines often fragments and splinters into solos or duets, rather in the manner of 'jazz breaks'. Perhaps the most notable example is the strange, disembodied central episode for viola and piano, later joined by the 'cello.
The piece has a close affinity with an electronic work of mine, Night Machines (1987) which suggested many compositional ideas to me through computer sequencing that I've since been trying to incorporate into 'acoustic' instrumental writing. Jazz Machines certainly represents the most blatant example of this to date.
The work was commissioned by the London Sinfonietta with funds provided by the South Bank Centre. It was completed in January 1990.Duration c.12 minutes.
© Martin Butler
Reproduced with permission of Oxford University Press

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