The Bat Detector
A venture in poetry and music
A collaborative work of poetry and music. This work consists of an alternation of short pieces for solo viola with poems from Liz Barrett’s collection The Bat Detector. Liz is a nationally acclaimed poet living in Sheffield. The poems and music alternate.
The first sequence of poems uses the metaphor of detecting bats to explore the communication within a family with an autistic child. The music seeks to capture the inner world of the boy, as well as to express the emotions in the poems, from distress to redemption. The signature piece is an atmospheric depiction of bats in flight.
The second sequence, Magnolia, is a series of love poems, providing inspiration for music which encompasses passion, eroticism, desolation and all the trappings of romanticism.
