Duration: 3:00

Orkest de Ereprijs

Composed for performace by the Orkest de Ereprijs at the 11th International Young Composers’ Meeting in Apeldoorn, the Netherlands

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Like many composers of my generation, I have a split musical personality. By day, I compose instrumental and vocal music in the undefinable tradition of “art” or “concert” or “serious” music. By night, I produce hip hop and popular electronic dance music under the pseudonym Professor Monkeypants. In the past, I have felt some pressure to keep these two worlds separate, lest my concert music become too unsophisticated or my popular music too bizarre. But it occurred to me that composers have incorporated the popular dances of their times into concert music for centuries. Indulging a whim, I decided to compose I let the monkey out of his cage. It is a piece that does not merely exhibit influences of popular electronic dance music but is actually an example of drum ‘n bass, a genre of fast, aggressive electronica.