The Last Memory is music created by a solo saxophonist with a digital delay unit. The duration of the performance is about 14 minutes.
When my father was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease in 1996, I witnessed how he struggled to differentiate between the reality of current events and memories of past events. It seemed to me that when this kind of dementia rapidly sets in, the mind becomes an echo chamber which revisits memories over and over again, creating an internal world equally real to the external one.
In response, I wrote this piece to explore my feelings and observations about forgetfulness, flawed memories, so-called genetic memory, storied experiences, short and long term memory, nostalgia and memory loss.
The work was composed for Roger Heaton who gave the first performance in Manchester, UK in 1996. It also appears on the 1997 ACS Classical Series CD recording ACS CD CD2 and the Divine Art release 'Mind Music' (DDA 25138), released in 2017.
This work is also available for clarinet.
