Tweedledrum (2014)

for percussion duo

Duration: 10’

Written for and first performed by The Riot Ensemble percussionists, Sarah Mason and James Leveridge

Percussion List

Percussion 1: 2 jam-blocks (medium-high and low), 2 triangles (small and large; large prepared with chain), 2 empty wine bottles (approx. C and C#, or a semi-tone apart), 10" high tom, 2 hand bells (high (ceramic) and low (glass)), 6-8" stainless steel mixing bowl, large cowbell, brake drum, tambourine (with strikable plastic edge), hard mallets, triangle beater, set of keys, plastic brushes (regal tip ultraflex), 10" rubber drum mute; Percussion 2: drum kit, small cowbell, shaker (medium-large), triangle (medium), tambourine (mounted on hi-hat 2), flexatone, hotrods, sticks, timpani mallets, triangle beater.

Program Note

Tweedledum and Tweedledee

Agreed to have a battle;

For Tweedledum said Tweedledee

Had spoiled his nice new rattle.

Inspired by Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There (1871), Tweedledrum sets the characters Tweedledum and Tweedledee against each other in a battle. Embracing the ideas of twins, mirror-image, and ‘same-same, but different’, the piece uses two distinct percussion set-ups. One percussionist plays a hybrid set-up of metal, wood and glass, and the other a hybrid drum kit, drawing on (or more commonly associated with) rock and jazz worlds. Despite the seeming differences between the set-ups, both physically and stylistically, Tweedledrum explores the similarities between them, as well as the double personalities present in each.

Performances

17 February 2019, 2Hz (Hamish Upton & Zela Papageorgiou), Classic Cinemas, Elsternwick, VIC

21 July 2016, Louis Sharpe and Mitch Bruzzese, Australian Music Day, MLC School, Sydney, NSW

20 July 2016, Louis Sharpe and Mitch Bruzzese, Australian Music Day, MLC School, Sydney, NSW

17 July 2015, The Sound Collectors, Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts, Perth, WA

6 November 2014, The Riot Ensemble’s Sarah Mason and James Leveridge, St. Leonard's Church, Shoreditch, London