Programme Notes – Bermuda Triangle (1994)

The Bermuda Triangle is a legendary area of ocean celebrated for mysterious happenings, nautical disappearances and other baffling phenomena. It is also the name of an equally legendary Caribbean waterside bar – a meeting place for sporting characters of many races, renowned for the warmth of its welcome, the potency of its beverages and the high-spirits of some of the goings-on there. Taken seperately, the words conjure up pictures of their own which the composer reflects in his work – a piece of serious confectionary not without its sinister side: the Bermudans with their informal, fun-loving approach to life, and Triangles, darkly suggestive of mathematics, percussion instruments, compound time and marital infidelity. If you can imagine the great Pythagoras on a holiday cruise (aboard the SS Hypotenuse ) stopping off to let his hair down with a highly mixed bunch of sporting locals at an impromptu musical barbecue, and never being seen again, then you will bet the picture.

Giles Easterbrook