Jasper and Charlie (2015)
(a Scene from a Novel for Wind Quintet)

The wind quintet, Jasper and Charlie, was commissioned by Peter Jopling in 2015 as part of his 60th Birthday celebrations. The work was first performed at Peter's private birthday party in the Salon of the Melbourne Recital Centre on August 2, 2015, and a month later given a public first performance at ANAM by the Sculthorpe Wind Quintet.

The piece is inspired by the first chapter of Craig Silvey's wonderful book, Jasper Jones. At the time when the ink first hit the page with some of my doodles for the piece, I had just started reading the book. I found the first chapter as gripping as any book I had read in years and my head and heart knew it was exactly the inspirational spark that I needed for the quintet.

“Late on a hot summer night in the tail end of 1965, Charlie Bucktin, a precocious and bookish boy of thirteen, is startled by an urgent knock on the window of his sleep-out. His visitor is Jasper Jones, an outcast in the regional mining town of Corrigan. Rebellious, mixed-race and solitary, Jasper is a distant figure of danger and intrigue for Charlie. So when Jasper begs for his help, Charlie eagerly steals into the night by his side, terribly afraid but desperate to impress. Jasper takes him through town to his secret glade in the bush, and it's here that Charlie bears witness to Jasper's horrible discovery of the body of Laura Wishart, hanging from a tree. The story twists and turns through the emotional impact of their discovery, Charlie's boyish dreams shattered by a world usually reserved for adults and the necessity for silence, for fear of small town ignorance and racism directed at Jasper. The only people who prevent Charlie from being swallowed by the horror of his secrecy is his best friend Jeffrey, the tiny figured misunderstood soon-to-be hero of Corrigan, and Eliza, the object of Charlie’s boyish desires and sister of the body that hung from the tree.”

(Synopsis adapted from Allen and Unwin promotional material)

The bassoon represents Jasper and the oboe represents Charlie. And in general, the music attempts to create an atmosphere replicating the chilling reality of what Jasper and Charlie have to face in the opening pages. All of this is combined with the resulting fears and trauma that such a life-changing event can have on such young minds.

I am grateful to my colleagues in the Sculthorpe Wind Quintet who inspired every twist and turn of the compositional process and were extremely helpful in the first rehearsals by suggesting improvements and changes. I am also grateful to the Arcadia Quintet, who have taken the piece into their hearts and gave their first of many public performances at the Port Fairy Festival in October 2015.

Paul Dean 2015