Gesticulations is a renovation of an earlier work Gesta for xylophone and piano that I wrote in the 1980’s. In 2015 I wrote a version with Flute and, in 2023 when Gwyn Roberts asked me to suggest pieces of mine for this program, I created this version for clarinet and piano. Converting a piece of music from one instrumental setting to another is very different from translating one language to another, e.g., English to French. A simple illustration is as follows: when you strike a xylophone key, “plink”, it immediately decays. The piano is similar but has the sustain pedal which allows it to sound longer but it decays nevertheless.