This duo was written to celebrate the 75th birthday of my colleague, Peter Tahourdin. In essence, it is a meditation followed by a dance, and for most of its course the two instruments blend such that it’s hard to tell which is which.
The title comes, as several of my titles do, from Shakespeare’s The Tempest, a play with which Peter Tahourdin himself had a long association. The words are spoken by the ‘monster’ Caliban in one of the play’s most beautiful speeches:
Be not afeard: the isle is full of noises,
Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight, and hurt not.