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Haiku written by 17th century Japanese masters are read in this composition in a setting of Flute, and four percussionist playing an assortment of percussion including vibraphone, cymbals, gongs, tin cans and various collections of wind chimes and metal sounds. The piece has been performed at William Paterson University, Rowan College, the Aspen Music festival, and NYU percussion ensemble to name a few. Sample 1 (Click Arrow to Play) |
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The title “Faith in Nights” is taken from a poem by Rilke which reflects on the challenges and rewards of solitude and loneliness. On an emotional level the piece charts a journey from tension-filled introversion and silence to outbursts of extroverted activity. In hindsight I see that the piece represents an attempt to include the mystery of hushed, ceremonial sounds with the exuberance of trance and dance traditions. The mechanics of the piece are as follows: virtually all the harmony is built around an Indian raga whose signature intervals are a flatted second, fifth, and sixth, and a major seventh. A great deal of focus rests on the harmonic hinge created by the major seventh, root, and minor second. Rhythmically the piece owes a debt to traditions from India and W. Africa, suffused with American vernacular. Emphasis is placed on lines in the mallets that pick up off one another, crisscrossing contrapuntally. The opening bass drum rhythm, slowed to a desperate crawl, is a New Orleans Mardi Gras rhythm, which is finally picked up at the end of the piece and allowed to take off. Sample 1 (Click Arrow to Play) |
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(Piano Scores sold separately contact us for information) He was able to ask two of his colleagues on the music staff of St. Paul’s Girls’ School, Vally Lasker and Nora Day, to play his two-piano version to him on Saturday mornings in his sound-proof music room at the school. These two friends were his chief amanuenses. When the time came for them to help him write out the full score they were able to follow the details of instrumentation which they had written from his dictation in the margins of the keyboard manuscripts they had been playing from. (The manuscripts, autograph and partly autograph, are in the British Library Add. MS 57811: the Royal College of Music Parry Room Library MS 4556-61: and the Royal Academy of Music MS 303.) Percussion Notes
The Planets I: Mars (sample 1) (Click Arrow to Play) |
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This is my first piece that involves the use of simultaneous, contrasting meters on a larger scale of personnel. Furthermore, I was able to associate this sound with a specific story. According to Virgil's Aeneid, the ancient Romans believed the path to the underworld went through Mount Vesuvius. At the bottom of the volcano was said to be a secret door that led to a worldwide series of underground tunnels called "vheissu." The work is in three sections that aim to depict a soul's journey to, and through, the underworld based on Greek and Roman mythology. In each section, there are no less than three different meters occurring simultaneously, which help to evoke a sense of harmonic stasis within a constantly changing contrapuntal web. |
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