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Shattered Moon for Trumpet and Electronics (2020) 

Trumpet by Jonathan Tompkins

Shattered Moon is written for Trumpet and Electronics. It is inspired by a Chinese fairy tale, "猴子捞月“, “ where a monkey tries to scoop up the moon out of the water, only realizing it is just the reflection of the real Moon.
 
Shattered Moon is one of my first explorations of electroacoustic music. The electronics set the soundscape in and out of the water by manipulating the EQ of field recordings. When in the water, the high-frequency sounds are muffled, and when out of the water, it goes back to the EQ we are more familiar with. The same spatial quality is also indicated in my choice of trumpet mutes, where unmuted trumpet corresponds to air as the medium of sound, and the Harmon mute corresponds to the sound underwater. 
 
In this piece, the trumpet writing tends to be unpredictable, which represents the amorphous shape of the Moon, rippled and shattered by the tide and wind. It is even more exemplified by the live granulator synthesizer, where I chopped up the continuous trumpet sound to small grains, and rearranged them as if they were the transient reflection. 
 
Is it real or is it just an illusion? We find the answer when we look up into the night sky.

The trumpet is played by Jonathan Tompkins​ in this recording

Sample Score

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