PRESS PLAY Episode 69: Seven Short Pieces

January 15, 2026

Seven Short Pieces (2004)

Laurence Crane (UK), composer

Leslie Newman, bass flute
Anthony Thompson, clarinet
Alissa Cheung, violin
Stephanie Bozzini, viola
Isabelle Bozzini, cello
Jackie Leung, piano

Composer Michael Pisaro writes, “One of the several mysteries of Laurence Crane’s music is how its apparently normalised structure subverts itself. This is often music of tonal harmony and four bar phrases – and, for the most part standard classical instrumentation. It never goes on too long. It is hardly ever abrupt or unexpected. Logical. Clear. Orderly. Quiet. Yet it is also, to my ears, quietly crazy, even absurd in its extremely understated way… In a way, they are a little like readymades. The individual elements in the abstract can usually be found somewhere else. And it seems to me that Laurence takes great pleasure in making the distance between a tonal cliché and the material used in his piece as small as possible. (An aesthetic of inserting a molecule of foreign substance into the flour, water, yeast and salt.) But this very slight twist that Crane gives in voicing or instrumentation – or simply the placement of an element, is enough to render the commonplace odd; or to return it to its original, inexplicable and much greater oddity.”