Listen to Ethan’s original composition submitted with his entry.
Listen to Ethan’s composition performed by the QYO Chamber Orchestra.
Ethan Parfoot [Age 18, Qld]
Composition: Menacing Statuettes
As long as I can remember I have been engrossed and involved with every form of music. I began playing music at around five years old studying, if you could call it that, piano. Soon I picked up trombone and was blessed with many opportunities through performance in both jazz and classical disciplines. Including performances with Creative Generations Big Band and Symphony Orchestra. Performing with brass bands, concert bands and big bands has been a big part of my musical life up to this point. In addition to performance, I found myself exploring composition at age fourteen which has led me to study composition at the Queensland Conservatorium of Music under the tutelage of Yitzhak Yedid.
As an artist, I am strongly interested in exploring other artistic disciplines such as visual art, film and literature. These other artistic mediums seem to seep into my mindset as I compose. This parallel between my music and other art forms is something that guides me through my process and will continue to influence my compositional voice in future.
Composition Inspiration
I am inspired by and influenced by painting and filmography. In these art forms there is a strong lean towards presenting abstraction, this idea of presenting a form of abstraction is the idea that my composition “Menacing Statuettes” follows and manipulates. One way in which I collect ideas for future compositions is within nature itself, sometimes landscape photography and painting, the inspiration for this piece came from a landscape I discovered. I recall a grassy plateau, speckled with yellow flowers. Rising out of the grass were three ugly, manmade concrete bollards. This idea of nature’s beauty being strangled by manmade structures is the idea that I decided to manipulate into abstraction, but not in an obvious way I decided to do my best to emulate the ideas and form that Claude Monet portrayed visually, and Claude Debussy did musically through impressionistic broad strokes. Ultimately portraying the idea but only the very essentials of the image.