GRIT

OSSICLE DUO

BEN ANDERSON – brass  //  HAMISH UPTON – percussion

JAMES HULLICK – composer

HOME INVASION NEVER SOUNDED SO GOOD

Two thieves become revolutionised when they rob the wrong house.

Comments from GRIT composer James Hullick: “GRIT follows on in some ways from Harry Partch and his earlier hobo works. And there is also the legacy of the American beat poets and authors – but particularly Alan Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac. These artists created work from lived experiences.

GRIT in some ways embraces the metaphor of my earlier warehouse living days and my random backpacking experience, but it’s never direct, or literal. 

The work features two characters – the Brassist and the Percussionist. They are itinerant characters, down on their luck and angry with the society within which they live. They therefore decide to steal from the rich by means of an ill-conceived home invasion.

A key feature of this score is a general restlessness with a relationship with time and notation in general, which at times is fragmentary. The representation of time and notation switches between traditional western notation, contemporary proportional notation – as often found in the works of Luciano Berio – and graphic notation. Our itinerant characters are restless souls and their whole fabric of existence and mental states are in continual flux.”

THE OSSICLE DUO

James Hullick