happy birthday hike

Reddy wrote this electronic piece on his synthesiser for his long-time partner, Heike Asmuss. This is what she says about happy birthday hike:

‘I am not sure what the exact title is, but it was a surprise for my 35th birthday. I had a garden party in Konstanz and Surendran stood up and said that he had composed a happy birthday song for me, in a dancey style because I love dancing. He played it and we all danced to it. You can hear that Surendran quotes Bobby McFerrin near the end, and the very last whistled melody is the one whistled by Bobby McFerrin at the beginning of “Don’t worry, be happy”. That little melody became special to us, and we worked it into a little piece I wrote in Surendran’s Windhoek composition seminar in 1992: he wrote an “improvisation” for flute beginning with that melody, over a sequence of chords, for me to play on my flute. During the whole of Surendran’s performing career after that he always sneaked that little melody in. Suddenly, during an improvisation, he would play it and look at me and we smiled: a small “hello” between the two of us that nobody else knew about, just us. That motif appears in his other compositions as well. I definitely remember it in toccata à la mode and in a few other ones. It was always like a beautiful surprise, an unexpected sudden moment of happiness, very special.’