I am interested in the application of cinematic editing techniques to musical composition, and several of my previous pieces have explored ideas and techniques borrowed from film making, such as my quintet 'Strike' (which owed a great deal to Eisenstein's theory of montage) and my violin solo 'Rough Cut', premiered in 2016, which is of sort of companion piece to this clarinet solo.
The jump cut is a type of film editing which gives the effect of jumping forwards in time. It is a manipulation of temporal space using the duration of a single shot, and fracturing the duration to shift the audience ahead; the jump cut abruptly interrupts the passing of time, as opposed to the more seamless 'dissolve' which is used more extensively. Jumps cuts suggest the ambivalences or ruminations of a character; they draw attention to the way a story is told.
The first film to make a feature of jump cuts was Jean-Luc Godard's 'Breathless' (1960), one of the earliest, most influential examples of French New Wave cinema.
Jump Cut was first performed in February 2018 by Zoe Fagerhaug, to whom the piece is dedicated.
