• metals   (mp3 format; 8:49 -- 12.7 Mbytes)

When we cleaned out the house earlier, I was able to collect many of my grandfather's musical pieces. Grandpa Hicks (my mother's father) played with the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra for 40+ years. When they were on tour, he would visit pawn shops and pick up chess sets, pocket watches, and... musical instruments. His flute collection was donated to the St. Louis Municipal Museum. But he also had a number of bells and chimes: wind chimes, sleigh bells, bell trees, dinner chimes, temple bells, etc. that he kept. I brought them back to Whidbey Island. I had wanted to do a piece using many of these, augmented by several metallophones (kalimba, hang drum) that I had collected myself. metals is that piece.