Written in 2019 for the Melbourne Recital Centre’s 10th anniversary celebrations, Samuel Smith’s Dark Colours explores the sounds of the wind quintet in a particularly unique way. The composer writes the following:

“dark colours finds its meaning and purpose in the assemblage of colours visible behind closed eyes. Appropriately then, it explores an interior, hushed, and nocturnal sound-world characterised by sounds in threshold states, where the smallest change of breath or finger can result in a rich difference in the sounding result. In this manner, slow, simple and interior gestures become complex and liminal, echoing the chaotic flicker and pulsation of dark colour projected behind the eyelids.”