Trio for strings: For violin, viola and double bass
Robert Davidson · 2005
Ten-minute composition for strings featuring innovative approaches to using double bass in chamber music and integrating compositon and group improvisation.Program Note: I came to write a trio for violin, viola and double bass partly out of a desire to play in such a trio myself as a bassist. It is a particularly resonant ensemble, and the bass is free to occupy a wide range with no cello as competition.Throughout the piece, several strands of time are heard simultaneously, marked out by the three players individually. Similarly, there are often several tonalities gently layered together in strata.Each performer spends substantial time in improvisational flights, departing from the constraints marked out in other sections of the music. These constraints often take the form (in my mind) of small spinning cogs in a complex machine (the cogs being self-focused repeating figures).