The Formula (wind quintet) by Bekah Simms

Recorded with the Blythwood Winds by Paul Talbott, August 2016.

"This piece is inspired by “The Formula,” an expansive mural underneath a rail overpass created by Toronto street artist Joel Richardson. The mural’s first iteration was unceremoniously buffed by the City of Toronto, partially due to its political nature – its anti-capitalist imagery, satirizing business and consumption culture, is quite clear. Despite this removal, the mural came back in bigger and better form: larger, more colourful, and even more scathing.

This piece, similarly, attempts to “buffer” an initial dissent, expressed as multiphonics, but these pervasive musical ideals are renewed with even more strength and clarity through an invasive, almost annoying profile of repetition and interruption. It also incorporates some of the numerical elements from the original mural, described as a “commentary on the mathematics of modern finance” through rhythmic and pitch relationships. Additional pitches are “grabbed” from multiphonics."