Cockroft, Barry - Ku Ku
Barry Cockroft is an Australian saxophonist and composer who performs regularly in Australia and Europe. He studied in Melbourne and later in France with the great French saxophonist and pedagogue Jean-Marie Londeix. Cockroft has a passion for new music and promotes the saxophone among Australian composers. He is also committed to education and teaches at the University of Melbourne and the Victorian College of the Arts. In 2005, Cockroft released his début recording, Beat Me, which features several of his own compositions, renowned for their innovation and exoticism. In performing these pieces Cockroft seeks to challenge the listener, although there is a sinew of accessibility that pervades most of his work.
Ku Ku was written as a cathartic response to the challenges of learning Berio's Sequenza VIIb and bears some resemblance to the late Italian composer's piece. This is manifested primarily in the repeated Db gravitational thread that pervades the piece's second half. Some of the multiphonics are also used in the Sequenza, but are here presented more as percussive effects rather than independent sonorities. Although a serious piece, there is an overtly humorous element to Ku Ku. In the composer's own words:
“There are happy hens, ones that live on a free range farm, that have
worms to eat, and lay lots of eggs. The air is fresh and the nice strong
rooster caters for all their needs... There are other kinds of chickens, ones
that may have lost their mind, or their head! Each day they do the same
thing, they live in little boxes, cluck, cluck...cluck, cluck.”
Ku Ku was written as a cathartic response to the challenges of learning Berio's Sequenza VIIb and bears some resemblance to the late Italian composer's piece. This is manifested primarily in the repeated Db gravitational thread that pervades the piece's second half. Some of the multiphonics are also used in the Sequenza, but are here presented more as percussive effects rather than independent sonorities. Although a serious piece, there is an overtly humorous element to Ku Ku. In the composer's own words:
“There are happy hens, ones that live on a free range farm, that have
worms to eat, and lay lots of eggs. The air is fresh and the nice strong
rooster caters for all their needs... There are other kinds of chickens, ones
that may have lost their mind, or their head! Each day they do the same
thing, they live in little boxes, cluck, cluck...cluck, cluck.”