One Black Bird

Adaption of Blackbird (Lennon-McCartney)
for piano, toy piano, melodica, metronome & voice
comissioned by Dorrit Bauerecker
2016
Duration: 4′

Dorrit Bauerecker at a performance of One Black Bird as part of her concert program One Woman Band.  Photos: Michael Zerban

In this arrangement of Blackbird, the situation of Paul McCartney recording alone in the Abbey Road studio is transposed to that of a pianist and singer “practicing” on her own. The tap shoes that mark the continuous beat in the song are replaced here by a metronome. Individual elements of the original material are deconstructed and moved into new contexts by unpredictable loops. A small excerpt of Bach’s Bourrée, which served as inspiration for Blackbird, is prefixed to the arrangement in the simplification McCartney once made.