top of page

Linstead Market

2018
Image by Orfeas Green


Details

Category

Chamber

Instrumentation

String Quartet

Duration

5:00

Commissioned by

Castle of Our Skins

Premiered by

Castle of Our Skins

Available

Notes

Linstead Market is a traditional Jamaican Calypso song about a mother who goes to the Linstead Market to sell her ackee fruit, but she doesn't sell any. Meanwhile, the kids are hungry, and in the end, the mother wonders how she's going to feed them! Many of the swift, rhythmic gestures of the strings can be thought of in the way that the mother probably runs after the customers in desperation to sell her ackee fruit!

It was a pleasure to compose an arrangement of this very fun, light-hearted folk song as the first piece of my 2018-19 residency with Castle of Our Skins. Compositionally, I especially loved to highlight several expressive techniques of the string writing to capture the friendly, upbeat mood of the tune.

bottom of page