Old Rags / Past Haunts

first performance: Ronan Apcar, The Utzon Room, Sydney Opera House AUS November 2025 — commissioned by Ensemble Offspring — instrumentation: piano, bluetooth speaker, samples — Duration 10′ / 2025

Old Rags / Past Haunts is dedicated to Ronan Apcar, for whom the piece was written. ‘Rags’ refer both to the African American musical style ‘ragtime’, of which syncopated or ‘ragged’ rhythms are a key stylistic component, and also to a ‘sewing together’ of fragments, many of which allude to music that grew out of ragtime, such as stride piano (Fats Waller, James P Johnson, Art Tatum et al.) and 1960’s ragtime revivalism. There are also allusions to twelve-tone music. Although my dad joyfully introduced me to recordings of Fats Waller when I was a kid in the 1970’s, the purpose of the piece is also to try and serialise memory. (TM)

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