Edward Cowie: One Second Fiddle

(A piece about Evolution for solo violin)

Mihailo Trandafilovski – violin

A couple of months ago, Edward Cowie e-mailed me to let me know he had had a dream in which he and I were walking in a wild estuarine habitat — he had a violin case with his old instrument, and in a conversation about music and nature, he told me that he’d had an idea for a new piece for me — so he took out his violin and played a piece that consisted of a ‘procession’ of ONE-SECOND pieces.

He remembered all the 55 one-second pieces the next day, and weaved them into a multi-dimensional work: a network combining evolution, virtuosity, silent gestures, non-verbal voice patterns, and other things …

This is a ‘live’ (one-take) lockdown performance — 7th February, 2021