DESCRIPTION:
Excerpts from "Saint Blue" a Double Concerto for Trumpet and Piano by Geoffrey Gordon (http://www.geoffreygordoncomposer.com/)

Coming on CD and download in 2017 from Signum Records

Fanfare Duo:
Simon Desbruslais-trumpt (http://www.simondesbruslais.com/)
Clare Hammond- piano (http://clarehammond.com/)

English String Orchestra (http://eso.co.uk/)
Kenneth Woods- Artistic Director (http://kennethwoods.net/)

Inspired by the works of Russian visual artist and visionary, Wassily Kandinsky, Saint Blue (a double concerto for trumpet, piano and strings) is divided into two contrasting sections, with the second essentially embedded in the first—a kind ofsonic exploration of the sacred and profane—in a fairly straight-forward A-B-A design. The first section is a reaction to Kandinsky’s 1911 All Saints I (part of the Stadtische Galerie’s permanent collection in Munich), and features the soloists and full string orchestra in a shared expression of this colourful masterpiece. The contrasting B section draws the orchestra’s principal double bass into a trio with the trumpet and piano soloists, creating a kind of extended, jazz-infused cadenza, after Kandinsky’s In Blue (1925; part of the Kunstsammlung Museum’s collection in Dusseldorf). An animated return to the tutti string orchestra and some (evolved) thematic music from All Saints I, concludes Saint Blue.
-- Geoffrey Gordon