Montana Strange

There are four movements. Movements 1 and 2 run together.

Montana Strange was written for and dedicated to my friend and virtuoso improviser Paul Dunmall. It was inspired by the work of iconic filmmaker David Lynch.

My intention was to create a giant musical landscape: a dream world filled with notions of loss, belonging, anxiety, a world full of covered up secrets and unsaid feelings, a world of truth and longing.

The work involves three seperate groups of players: a fairly gymanstic symphony orchestra, a somewhat chaotic and disruptive smaller ensemble and the astonishing, virtuosic, free improviser: Paul Dunmall.

There are two conductors, one for the orchestra, the other for the ensemble. Paul is his own boss.

Throughout the orchestra provides a mutating series of backdrops, which are attacked and interrupted by the ensemble. Paul freely navigates and surfs the lot, avoiding, dodging, fighting, riding the waves as they appear. He decides when to play and when not to.

The structure and improvisational nature of the pieces means that it can never be performed the same way twice and will, always, hopefully surprise.

- Brian Irvine

These opening words of Lost Highway act as a catalyst for a menacing, aggravated and myste- rious tale. A wild, overwhelming, turbulent landscape is broken momentarily by short moments of static ease. Huge chords and the wafting sound of music from a distant source lead to a soft- er more sympathetic place full of birds and love. This orchestral paradise in turn gives way to a frenetic, violent excursion for the ensemble.

Like several jarring radio stations the orchestra struggles to get its dainty tune heard before eventually erupting into a ridiculously disjointed fairground romp. The ensemble provides a Blue Velvet coda.

The subtitle to Eraserhead, this is a world of isolation, despair and terror where the lone voice of the saxophone cries out, with all its might, against a stronger and imposing orchestra.

Lynch’s reoccuring mutant chickens cluck and comically strut about. The orchestra chases as the ensemble swipes at disjointed scurrying birds. A dislocated, chaotic, heroic pantomime that leads to nothing.