Dormant Craters

The instruments used include two jazz drum sets (one on cymbals only, the other on tom-toms only), a gamelan ensemble of four, a steel drum group of five, eight timpani, seven Chinese gongs, seven Thai "button gongs," three pairs of pot covers (rotated, and sometimes sawed) glockenspiel, chimes, vibraphone, two sets of cowbells, two sets of Chinese blocks, three orchestral bass drums, three pairs of crash cymbals and four snare drums. Also required is a three-octave chromatic set of hand bells (distributed among the 16 players-two bells per player.) Whether or not the sound of this piece has any connection with dormant volcanic craters, I am hardly in a position to say; but the craters I mean are the latent explosions we don't know about yet, both in the human sphere and in the natural world.