from: The Agency Animal Show (7/11/04)
from: Night of the Living Composers II (10/28/04)

Exploding Carousels for Flute, Clarinet and Cello (1999)

by Donnie Ashworth


Donnie Ashworth is a composer/flautist with the Birmingham, Alabama contemporary music consortium BAMA (Birmingham Art Music Alliance).  Rusty and Christy Banks participated in this group while residing in Birmingham, and occasionally return to the area for performances.  The New Music Agency will be bringing to Lincoln several works by these musicians from the Deep South. Already, Rusty has performed a guitar work on our June 26th concert by BAMA composer Charles Norman Mason (Mirrors, Stones and Cotton)  and we will be performing other works by composers from BAMA this fall.

BAMA website:  http://www.artmusic.org

While Rusty reports that the city of Birmingham embraces performances of contemporary music, the occasional work is out there that perhaps doesn't quite capture the imagination of a particular arts review.  The following comments about the work "Exploding Carousels" appeared in a concert review published in the Birmingham (AL) News:

Ashworth's "Exploding Carousels" opened the program at the Alabama School of Fine Arts.  A self-absorbed trio for clarinet, flute and cello, inspired by unpleasant childhood memories, its ear-splitting dissonances and steady pulsations were more annoying than cathartic and, thankfully, short.