Colin Decio Composer & Pianist
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Piano Trios 

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Violin
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Piano
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Cello

Piano Trio No.1
PictureBatik painting by Greg Tricker
'Het Achterhuis'
The Secret Annexe
(for Anne Frank) 
composed in 1988
for violin, cello & piano
in six movements​
​
Duration 37 minutes

(​See also Souvenir d'Anne Frank)

.....serious, moving premiere'' 
(Charles Hutchinson The Press)"

 "Very beautiful, touching and well worthy of its subject" 
- Robert Oliver (of Palliser Viols)
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Souvenir d'Anne Frank theatre work based on Het Achterhuis
From 2011-2012 Ensemble Theatre Company toured the UK with performances of Souvenir d'Anne Frank - written by Elizabeth Mansfield
​​Download Souvenir d'Anne Frank Education Pack for high schools -
Click here to upload file
File Size: 402 kb
File Type: pdf
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I am deeply impressed by Ensemble's Souvenir d'Anne Frank project. It is in my opinion not only an educational production of high value to young people, but an amazingly fascinating theatrical and musical event, that I will never forget. The collaborative painting workshop is another addition to this project, which will surely influence everyone attending it in a most humanistic way in the ideals of my cousin Anne Frank. I wish Souvenir d'Anne Frank all the success it deserves.”
​Buddy Elias (Anne Frank's cousin)
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Buddy Elias By Scott-Hendryk Dillan

Piano Trio No. 2 - for violin, cello & piano
completed in 2010. This is a three movement work, duration 12 mins. Stylistically it looks back in time, though the final slow movement is distinctly ‘modern’.

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Piano Trio No.3 - 'Fragments', for violin, cello & piano
​in four movements 
- duration 17:43 ​
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Piano Trio No.4 - for violin, cello & piano
composed in 2022, with high school students in mind.
It is in three titled movements. 
- duration 11:30
​
'Quis custodiet ipsos custodes'
I - A leisurely stroll through parliament grounds
II - Sleeping with the enemy
III - Dancing with the devils
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Piano Trio No.5 - ​for violin, cello & piano
'Unlikely Things Happen Through the Bodies of Beasts'
(in memory of UK artist Adam White)
Orreries I - III
in three movements
duration 16:00

Adam created the painting 'Children's Games' for the premiere of my Symphony No.1 (The Gloucester Symphony). Sadly he passed away far too young at the age of 54 on Christmas Day 2022.
As a student of composition I was discouraged from using diminished chords (something of the romantic past) and mixing styles. So I have done both of these in this eclectic work, which employs serial techniques such as inversion and retrograde inversion, fugue, stretto, counterpoint, melody and accompaniment, ostinato and dance forms. Adam's artwork was also quite eclectic so this seems to be a fitting piece in his memory. Adam was one-of-a-kind, a truly creative artist. ​
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​Piano Trio No.6 - ​for violin, cello & piano 
'Wash All the Flags'
​in four movements
​duration 23:28
​
contains snippet of the German marching song -
​Lebe wohl du kleine Monika (1939)

'Farewell, you little Monika, Must be divorced today!'

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​Piano Trio No.7 - ​for violin, cello & piano 
​in four movements
​duration 22:40
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​​Piano Trio No.8
The Three Christs of Ypsilante
- for violin, cello & piano 
in three movements
duration 9:00

The Three Christs of Ypsilanti was a psychiatric case study conducted in 1964 by Milton Rokeach, concerning his experiment on a group of three males with paranoid schizophrenia at Ypsilanti State Hospital in Ypsilanti, Michigan. Rokeach believed that they would cure each other. Instead each held to their absolutist claims of exclusive entitlement, maintaining their ‘point-of-view’. They refused to listen to each other and even came to blows. Such is the current state of the world. Everyone is maintaining their point-of-view and demanding absolute rights. Such a policy is unsustainable.

It was quite hard to write music based on this theme. Music by its nature evolves from listening and agreements. I deliberately made each instrument – violin, cello and piano, maintain their absolutist statements. They ‘deliberately’ refuse to listen to one another. Instead they continue to repeat their own (what is own?) separative ‘mantras’ over and over. No ideas are taken up by the other voices; though sometimes a mere echo of someone else’s statement may reappear later in altered form like a distant memory. Needless to say the overall effect of the piece is unsatisfying – my apologies!

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String Quartets
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  • Home
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