Small Group Catalogue

works for the BPO

• Malinga 
• Offering
• The first word
• E
• What I say (about you)
• Hello,Goodbye
• One fine day
• Nico’s dream
• The Promise
• Nomads
• The Blue Planet (where it all started)

Evidence compositions 

• Sleeping City
• Retrospective Waltz
• Golden Road
• Kinacho
• Salsa Differente
• Homespun
• Side-step

Trio Classics

• Pavane (Faure)
• Turkish Rondo (Mozart)
• Slow Movement (Beethoven)
• No Woman, No Cry/C major Prelude (Bob Marley/Bach)
  

London Songs

Six songs, each for a different ensemble and singer, including one for
choir. Each song is inspired by a different aspect of life in London.

I    Her Day (6.58 min)
II   Departure (4.45 min)
III  All Night Blues (4.44 min)
IV  Westway (5.40 min)
V  Hide and Seek (10.08 min)
VI  Peckham Dog (5.12 min)

I Afro-Baroque 
II   Patagonian Air
III  Cairo Rendezvous
IV  Finale, some afterthoughts 

Crossing The Border is a marriage between African and Latin groove and the thematic development and architectural concerns found in the European classical tradition. Roland Perrin has drawn on his experience in playing South African music (1: ‘Afro-Baroque’) and Tango (II: ‘Patagonian Air’). In ‘Cairo Rendezvous’ the Jews and Arabs meet in a Cuban 6/8. ‘Finale, some afterthoughts’ is like Schumann writing for Miles.


songs from the cage (35 minutes)
Choir and big band

‘songs from the cage’ sets six poems by hedonist/aficionado of  women /drinker /gambler /enemy of pretension /genius Charles Bukowski, (American, 1920 - 1994). 
His work is mostly about the ecstasy and the pain of living life without boundaries.
The music reflects at different times the abandonment to pleasure as well as the feeling of looking unblinkingly into the void of human existence.
"This piece is the result of my quest to fuse the musical worlds that I love and am steeped in, that is jazz, Latin American and African music and the European tradition of Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Schumann, Mahler, Sibelius, Satie, Janacek and Stravinsky.
I chose to set poems of Charles Bukowski because I identify with his unblinking view of humanity stripped of societal self-deception.
There is a prelude and six songs.
Amongst other things each song has a feeling of looking at the same ideas from a different angle." 

Roland Perrin 

read the letter from David Temple, Conductor of Hertfordshire Chorus & Crouch End Festival Chorus, commissioned ’songs from the cage’ 

The Blue Planet  (18 minutes)
Wild, thematic, daring, melancholy, free and controlled.

Nomads (12 minutes)
An Arabic Hebraic jazz tone poem inspired by personal and other histories of exile.

D.P. (8 minutes)
A beautiful lilting township ballad dedicated to Roland’s most important mentor, Dudu Pukwana.

Retrospective Waltz  (7 minutes 30)
Roland deputised for Chris McGregor when he fell ill on tour in France. He wrote this as soon as he got back home.

Roland has played with:

Dudu Pukwana (South Africa), Jonas Gwangwa (South Africa), Chris Macgregor’s Brotherhood of Breath (South Africa), Rey Crespo (Cuba), Juan de Marcos (Cuba), Osvaldo Chacon (Cuba), Aster Aweke (Ethiopia), Moses Fan-Fan (Congo), Salsa Celtica (Scotland/Cuba), Najma Akhtar (India), Roberto Pla (Colombia), Victor Hugo (Venezuela), Tumbaito (Venezuela), Gustavo Marques (Brazil), Guida de Palma (Portugal), Louise Rutkowski (Scotland)