TREVOR COLEMAN
Improvisations on Classics: The Peninsula Trio
Q You’ve featured at every festival since the Otago Festival of the Arts Trust was established?
I grew up in Dunedin but I lived most of my adult life overseas and I returned to Dunedin from Germany in 2000 and I got off the plane and played at the first festival that night and I’ve been involved ever since.
Q What has your involvement been in this festival?
A composition of mine was played at Cellists Aotearoa on Monday, I played trumpet in Beyond The Bright Black Edge of Nowhere for four nights from Tuesday and I’m playing piano in Improvisations on Classics: The Peninsula Trio today.
Q What was the subject of the composition?
Cellist Heleen Du Plessis commissioned me to write a composition for five cellos with two improvisation parts — one for trumpet and another for soprano saxophone. The work is based on the Doubtful Sound.
Q How do you write a composition based on a place?
I researched the Italian explorer Alessandro Malaspina, who led a Spanish expedition to Doubtful Sound in the 1790s . . . what interested me was what it would be like for the explorers to enter this place for the very first time and what kind of impressions they would have had.
Q Can you explain your trumpet playing in Beyond The Bright Black Edge of Nowhere?
I was invited to participate as an improvising musician and I concentrated on trumpet and the style of playing from the 1970s, like on the Miles Davis’ album Bitches Brew; this style of trumpet playing seemed to fit very well and gave it a dark edge.
Q How do you make a trumpet sound dark?
I use a Harmon mute to give it a sinister edge and a melancholy.
Q What’s a Harmon mute?
It’s like a condom for a brass instrument. You put it in the bell of the instrument and it dampens the sound.
Q Can you describe your performance at First Church today?
Me and [saxophone and flute player] Nick Cornish have teamed up with Heleen to play some classical music pieces from composers renowned for being very good improvisers. We approached the works respectfully but we add aspects of improvisation.
Q Any examples?
We are playing a double concerto by Bach with a cello and saxophone and I’m playing the accompaniment with a more blues gospel feel — it works together surprisingly well without taking away from the integrity of the music. We play a piece by Chopin and approach it with a samba rhythm underneath it but the melody is intact.
Q What do you enjoy about it?
There is an excitement improvisation brings to the table, there is a tingling tension in the room when you know these things are just happening right now in this moment. You don’t know what is going to happen in this concert, which you don’t have in a purely classical performance, where all the notes are set.
● Improvisations on Classics: The Peninsula Trio is on at First Church at 5pm today.
