Gêmdisyn – Studio Recording

Gêmdisyn (2021)

for solo E-flat clarinet

The word Gêmdis combines the Welsh words for “game” and “dice”. Gêmdisyn — the suffix -yn designating in Welsh a singular thing found in the natural world — is based on the solo E-flat clarinet part of Gêmdis (2020), composed for Carl Rosman and Ensemble Musikfabrik.

Rather than functioning as a straightforward extraction, Gêmdisyn reshapes and reorders its source material, discarding some sections entirely and transforming others. While Gêmdis moved through multiple emotional states, Gêmdisyn alternates between two contrasting modes: a whimsical, skipping chatter and a fiery, unstable loss of control. A central passage of fragile harmonics and deliberately audible air sounds — marked mechanical — interrupts this alternation, introducing a sense of fragile clarity before the work concludes.

Gêmdisyn was commissioned by Ensemble Musikfabrik and written for Carl Rosman.

– Tim Rutherford-Johnson

Performance / Recording
Performed by Carl Rosman (E-flat clarinet)
Premiered on 16 May 2022

Video and editing by Janet Sinica and Jan Böyng
Recording producer and editing by Stephan Schmidt

Watch the performance

More information about Gêmdisyn