Blink Blink for wind ensemble

When the American composer John Adams visited the composition class at the Amsterdam Conservatory on Van Baerlestraat in Amsterdam, he came across the score of Hai Koe, a playful piece based on the following self-written “haiku”:

HAI KOE
Moo, that’s what cows say
yet when a person walks past,
“Hi” they might have said.

Renske Vrolijk

In Hai Koe, recordings of mooing cows can be heard. A few years later, John Adams used a sample of a mooing cow in his clarinet concerto Gnarly Buttons.

Such coincidences create a connection.

It was an impulsive decision, on the occasion of John Adams’s Dutch premiere of his Christmas Oratorio El Niño, to capture this shared experience with him in the small composition Blink Blink for wind ensemble.

After the dress rehearsal of El Niño, John Adams stepped off the podium, only to be surprised by being handed the score of Blink Blink. This took place in the Main Hall of the Amsterdam Concertgebouw.

In 2005, Ostravská Bandá performed the world premiere during the Ostrava Days Festival under the baton of conductor Zsolt Nagy.