Killing Time
Don Freund
About this work:
Don Freund's Killing Time was composed in 1980 for amplified alto saxophone, amplified piano and a stereo tape which is decidedly pre-digital. Listeners who didn’t live through the ‘60’s and ‘70’s may not recognize Charles Manson’s favorite Beatle tune or know that a certain symphonic composer was a turn-on for the “ultra-violent” protagonist of A Clockwork Orange.
The unexpurgated program notes read: “Killing Time celebrates the power and joy of ugliness, violence, and wanton destruction. It was inspired by a newspaper article about a Punk Rock concert which incited listeners to acts of brutality and self-mutilation.”
The performance instructions suggest that “playback and amplification levels should be very loud, though not painfully so. The pain is inside the music, and the discomfort is in the listener’s moral-aesthetic consciousness, preferably after the fact.”
The mp3 presented here the first analog recording, with Allen Rippe, saxophone, and the composer as pianist. A recent digital recording by John Sampen and James Helton is available on the AUR CD "Sky Scrapings: Saxophone Music of Don Freund."
Year composed: 1980
Duration: 00:11:15
Ensemble type: Chamber or Jazz Ensemble, Without Voice:Keyboard plus One Instrument
Instrumentation: 1 Alto Saxophone, 1 Piano, 1 Prerecorded Sound (Tape/CD/Other)
Instrumentation notes: ampl alto sax, ampl pno, tape part is on CD