Five Tales of Human Endeavour (2005)
(for Solo Guitar)

These five miniatures were written for Keith Abbott and commissioned by Katy Abbott. Guitarist, Ken Murray, annotated the score (fingerings) and gave the first broadcast of the 4th miniature in 2007.

1: Yellow Canary. A bird traditionally taken down into the coal mines as a safety warning system. In Victoria, it is also a small yellow sticker affixed to the windscreen of a car which has been deemed by the police to be un–roadworthy.

2: Eleven months at sea. After circumnavigating the world non–stop in a small boat, 18–year–old Jesse Martin remarked that he had missed certain things – “things we take for granted now, which is probably a bit obvious, human contact, eye contact, you know, affection…good food.”

3: Light, sweet crude is a type of petroleum. Oil is big business and crude oil is the world's most actively traded commodity. It is ‘crude’ assumedly because it is unrefined. But ‘light’ and ‘sweet’? The mind boggles.

4: Into the Forest relates to desertion during the American Civil war. Huge numbers of troops (around 390,000) from both sides simply dropped their guns and fled into the forest. Many, of course, were caught by their own side and regulation demanded that they be shot. It is understandable though, that the forest must have seemed a haven – not only from the ‘enemy’ but also from one’s own army.

5: The Thin Blue Line is a description of the Earth’s ozone layer as seen from space. It is a relatively thin layer – part of a system that allows for life on planet Earth.