Fill is a minimalist piece composed in 2012. Rather than a traditional score, the piece consists of 8 separate motifs with varying time signatures. The playing instructions of the piece are as follows:
" This piece is intended for performance by Marimba, Contrabass and between 3 and 8 melodic instruments of varying tambre. Melodic instrumentalists all read the same part entitled "Lead" and may transpose it to an octave most easily playable for their range. Before performing, players of the melodic instruments must arrange themselves on stage from left to right according to the alphabetical order of their last name with the marimba and contrabass behind and to the left and right respectively. The player of the melodic instrument most furthest to the left is regarded as "The Leader". The piece begins when the leader starts to play section "A" and then repeats it. The instrumentalist next to the first may start at any time after they hear the first play section "A" at least one time round and so this continues until all instruments are playing and repeating section "A". The Marimba is to come in after half of the melodic instrumentalists are playing and the contrabass, after all.
Once all instrumentalists are playing section "A", The Leader may chose to start playing section "B". They may only change if they are at the end of "A" and would ordinarily be ready to repeat the section (You can't change half way through". Once the performer next to The Leader hears that the have moved on to the next section, they may also chose to move on the the next section and so does every other playing in the same manner as they started playing section "A". Once every instrumentalist is playing section"B" the leader may chose to move onto section "C" and so on and so forth until everyone has reached the final, Section "H"
Once every instrumentalist is playing section "H" The Leader may chose, in the same fashion as before to move back to section "G". The other instrumentalists follow as they did before and The Leader eventually makes their way back through the sections until everyone is once again playing section "A"
Once the leader hears everyone is playing section "A", in the same manner as if they was moving to the next section, they may now choose to stop playing. Once the next instrumentalist hears the leader has stopped, he may also choose to stop. The performers stop playing one by one in the same order as they started. The piece is over the Contrabassist stops playing.
Melody and harmony aren't created intentionally by an particular performer in this piece as they are usually. The idea of this piece is to achieve both harmony and melody inadvertently through the the use of clashing rhythm and tambre. To achieve this properly, performers are asked to keep the tempo as rigid as possible throughout the piece and to make special effort to ensure all instruments are heard by the audience equally (without one drowning out another)"
The piece follows a similar concept and form as In C by Terry Riley. I was premiered at Sound Spectrum Festival in April 2013.