Things You Might See in Cemeteries is in four colourful, dramatic and inventive movements and is aimed at the adventurous intermediate bass quartet. Primarily in bass clef, with some music in lower thumb position, this is an engaging work of rhythmic energy exploring a wealth of colours and timbres. There are musical and technical challenges in equal measure

“For my first multi-bass chamber work that was aimed to students as well as professionals, I chose to go to familiar territory in terms of colour and theme. I definitely wanted to do something macabre/gothic as this sort of milieu speaks to me the most. A unique path I went down was to make the material much more straightforward, in both rhythm and tempo, as both the outer fast movements and the inner slower movements. for the most part. basically stay in the same pulse and metre. I usually follow the tenets of one of my first teachers, decades ago, who said “Free your material from the tyranny of the bar line or one speed!” with there being usually a gargantuan amount of time signatures and tempo markings in my music.

Dedicated to my dear friend David Heyes, who is truly an industry-wide master of creating interesting and vital music for students and progressing players, the second movement was especially inspired by him with its mixing of ponticello and natural note colours, glissandi, low and high pizzicatos, and harmonics. The third, and moodiest movement, is really just variations on a mini melody of four notes to create its scary tapestry. The opening and final movement stay in one rhythmic drive for the bulk of the material and feature a lot of dramatically dissonant harmonies.

Finally, in a bit of a humorous nod to one of my other impassioned avocations – game shows – I thought of such when I came up with my title for the whole piece. Indeed, the title is formatted exactly as if it were a category in the bonus
rounds of my favourite game show of all, “The $100,000 Pyramid!” (I am of such a certain age I remember vividly the very first episode in Spring 1973 when it was just “The $ 10,000 Pyramid!)” [Programme note by P. Kellach Waddle]