CHRIS FITKIN
About
The Music
A sense of space is a defining feature of many pieces – a sense of space that may evoke emptiness, tranquility or loss. There is little in the way of a beat in these areas, and the texture can be sometimes fragmentary, sometimes floating.
Passages of rhythmic activity and excitement, with a very steady pulse, also emerge – though the fast intricate patterns often retain a light and delicate feel, rarely venturing into drama.
The structure is clear and disciplined, more recently stemming from the use of hexachords in a serial or permutational framework. many pieces are written with no key, though suggestions of tonal centres make fleeting and ambiguous appearances. Above all, the music is highly economical with little repetition.
Recent Collaborations
In 2024, it was a joy to collaborate with Lindsey Wiehl (Bassoon), Teresa Castañón (Clarinet), Carolina Prado (Oboe) and Davide Bonomo (Bass Flute, Alto Flute & Standard Flute during the recording of Serpen Sonatas.
Also in 2024I worked extensively with Davide Bonomo, Claudio Geminiani, Roberto Fantini, Antonio Cavuoto and Pietro Giunta, four musicians and a produced in Italy. This culminated in a recording in Bologna of the piece Hopper’s Mirror for Flute, Oboe, Clarinet & Bassoon. The intention was to release an album containing this long work. (At present, for technical reasons, this is not being released.)
From 2020 to 2022 I was fortunate to work with Eija Kankaanranta (Kantele) on pieces fgrom Dispersion, and Sebastian Poznansky (Cello) on Lines From The Renaissance (see the films Reconstruction and Hellick.)
The Films
I have been in love with the cinema for as long as I can remember. And especially the camerawork and the editing, the visual communication of information, the creation of atmosphere. In the opening minutes of Louis Malle’s L’Ascenseur Pour L’Échaffaud, a masterclass in cinematography, the camera pulls away very slowly from the face of Jeanne Moreau revealing that she is speaking on the phone; a fast sequence of cuts then occurs from one end of the phone call to the other, before we’re back lingering on the face of Jeanne Moreau. Now the camera pulls away again, but from a different angle, giving us more information (phone booth in street). Soon it pulls away from the face of her lover, Maurice Ronet, to reveal a grey building which will turn out to be super important in the story, then again it pulls away at a different speed. So, the extra close up focus becomes contextualised. We learn more by the zoom outs. Plus, they’re beautifully timed!
Above all, and the reason I highlight this movie opening, there’s a structure here : two zoomouts on her, two on him: 1) ultra slow 2) marginally faster but increasing in speed 3) fast but slightly slowing, 4) slow. This is intelligent and beautiful design (to a gorgeous Miles Davis soundtrack).
I rush to acknowledge that my films are not comparable to those of Louis Malle. They are much simpler. The point is simply to illustrate the wonderful combination of structure and atmosphere to which I aspire. All my films are cut to the music, so the visual structure is very much determined by the music. There is often no pan or zoom. Below is the final videoclip layout for Chordal Two: