march of the sceptics

This composition is a work in progress, a preliminary sketch of something much larger I want to create: a contemporary, secular, performance work. A comedic tragedy that grabs hold of your emotions from the start and simply won’t let go.

I’ve long wanted to fuse numerous of my personal and professional interests. On the musical side, to bring some of the wonderful complexity and richness of jazz and blues chords and rhythms to the grand atmospheric elegance of more traditional choral music and the exuberance and vitality of opera. And on the ‘book’ side – by which I mean the text, the storyline around which the musical theatre develops – to fuse politics, science, technology and contemporary society together, possibly with added ingredients, such as the highs and lows of social media and conspiracy tin-foilers, thrown in.

Having said all that, this piece is positioned more at the ‘grand atmospheric elegance’ mainstream end of the spectrum than emotion-grabbing rhythms and chords. It’s all ‘a bit of a journey’ as they say. How and when the various styles and themes will fuse, join and interplay with each other is all part of my current exploration.

Whether I’ll ever manage to assemble a complete work from my various musical sketches remains to be seen. In the meantime, here’s the ‘march of the sceptics’, with more to come over the next months (and probably years).