10 minutes – for percussion quartet whispering, shouting and singing (singing optional) – 4 snares, 4 almglocken (low F E D C), 4 floor or low toms tuned to D minor.

Vicious Children is the most arresting and exciting piece I heard this year.  Wally Gunn weaves chilling rhymes from Mother Goose and tight percussion writing into a piece that is not just music but thrilling, edge-of-your-seat theater.   – Elliot

The schoolyard and the playground can be places of savagery, where each child must nervously navigate the shifting alliances, the ruthless and cruel scheming, and sometimes the unjustified violence of their fellows. It’s not clear whether these behaviours are learned from grown-ups, or whether they are innate. In any case, they are ubiquitous, and no child escapes them. Vicious Children recalls this struggle with a musical and theatrical narrative of brittle stick clicks and driving drumming, dreamscapes of meditative bells, and grim, sinister nursery rhymes whispered, sung and shouted. The piece was composed for Mobius Percussion. — WG

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