DOYLE, ROGER - Baby Grand

Among my first piano compositions was Six Pieces for Pupils who Dont Like Exams. Baby Grand is the sixth of these and is composed for four hands (in this version I multitracked myself and used some double-speed recording techniques). ... Then in the 1980s I received two once-in-a-lifetime commissions ... The first was to compose music for a film by Irish film-maker Bob Quinn, called Budawanny. The music (which had to be piano music) was the play a central tole in this film, which was shot as a silent movie in black and white with captions appearing when people spoke. It required seventy minutes of music to be composed for it - uninterrupted by anyone talking over it (a composers dream) ... The second commission was from Dublins Gat Theatre to compose music for a production of Oscar Wildes play Salome, which required a piano player onstage throughout the show, playing non-stop for almost tow hours. For this Baby Grand CD I have included five pieces from that suite, but have replaced Salomes Dance with a new version recorded in concert in 2003. Mansard is from a 5CD set called Babel which took me ten years to compose (1989-1999). Each track corresponds to a room within an imagined giant Babel tower. --Roger Doyle, Autumn 2005.