Fog Tropes is a great composition, a thick, rich piece that is embedded in a specific place, namely a harbor (it happens to be San Francisco) in the fog. Gradual Requiem continues the music that has a rich drone built into it - a heavy texture under which more is heard. The requiem is beautiful. Gambuh is the most abstract, it seems. And perhaps the most beautiful on the album.
Fog Tropes is for brass sextet and tape (mostly consisting of fog horns and other marine sounds of San Francisco Bay). Brass musicians of the S.F. opera. John Adams: conductor. - Gradual Requiem performed by composer with live electronics, Balinese flute (gambu), voice and mandolin (Foster Reed) - Gambuh 1 is for the Balinese flute with tape delay and synthesizer.
In my mind one of the few great pieces of the 2nd half of the 20th century. Over the last 10 years I must have listened to Fog Tropes at least 150 times. In my book, Marshall effortlessly matches the creative minds of better-known composers such as Part, Gorecki, Reich, Glass and Bryars.
