Microtonal Instruments
Microtonal Trumpet
Between 2001-2, Stephen was a
consultant for the Centre for New Musical Instruments, London, (CNMI)
where he was responsible for learning and commenting on a prototype
microtonal trumpet. After further research, Stephen developed, in
collaboration with Johannes Radeke and Siegmar Fischer in Freiburg,
Germany, a fourth (rotary) valve mechanism to enable the conversion of
his existing trumpets into microtonal instruments (a 19-division B flat
trumpet and quarter-tone C trumpet).
This work has been in collaboration with Dr Donald Bousted of
Microtonal Projects UK, an expert in microtonal composition, and was
part of a larger project to write a microtonal trumpet manual, dealing
with quarter-tones, eighth-tones and 19-division tuning.
www.microtonaltrumpet.com
To date we have commissioned duo pieces with the 19-divison trumpet
from Donald Bousted, Jim Gardner (with finding provided by Creative New
Zealand), Michael Parsons, Michael Spenser and for the quarter-tone
trumpet from Donald Bousted and Yu Ching Chiang.
New works for the duo with the microtonal trumpet are being planned by
Carlos Carillo Cotto (Puerto Rico/USA), Philipp Blume (USA) and Jean
Philippe Calvin (F).
Microtonal Percussion
Lee has invested in a Malletkat which he can retune to play in
different tunings using Little Miss Scale Oven (Link) and Kontakt. He
will be presenting it at UKMicrofest4 in London in March 2011. Already
composers Eleri Angharad Pound, Scott McLaughlin and Alexander
Grebtschenko are begining new pieces for this instrument for the UK
Microfest 4 in March 2011 and we look forward to developing some more
repertoire!
Lee also has a one octave, 96-division (16th-tones) Bellophone developed by Tony Salinas.