Percussion Ensemble
About the event
The WSU Percussion Ensemble and WSU Indoor Project will be performing their spring concert next Tuesday, March 28 in Kimbrough Concert Hall at 8:00pm. It is free an open to the public. The ensembles will be joined by the WSU Tenor Bass Choir along with faculty member Dr. David Turnbull performing “Edifice for trumpet and percussion” by David Jarvis.
Selected Program Notes
Equal Fire is the first of a series of “pure energy” compositions I wrote for percussion ensemble in the early 1990’s. The piece is a reflection of my belief that all rhythmic pulses exist in nature. Musicians who acknowledge their presence can tap into these “streams” and use them mach as a high flying plane can use the jet stream or a boat uses a swift current. Given any pulse, there are various sub-divisional streams which run parallel to each other. Equal Fire begins rooted in the 16th note stream and uses the whip and woodblock in the beginning as a disruptor to force the performers into a separate stream (usually the quarter note triplet). The hole into the new stream only lasts a few seconds before fading back to the original. It is this alternation of streams which Equal Fire exploits.
The work was first performed in 1990 by the University of Texas “Wayne’s World” Percussion Ensemble. It is dedicated to George Frock, Professor of Percussion at U.T. as well as the commissioner of the work. (Paul Bissell)
Music for Pieces of Wood – Steve Reich (b.1936) is one of America’s leading composers. He was trained as a drummer and quickly became interested in the music of Asia and Africa. He has also developed extensive interested in the traditions of Jewish music. During the late 1960s, Reich experimented with combining composition and performance, integrating the traditions of notation and improvisation. Perhaps his most famous work is a piece called Drumming, first performed in 1971, which incorporates aspects of ritual into performance. Reich’s music has consistently focused on issues of rhythmic variation and repetition. Within a minimalist texture he has achieved a subtlety of timbre and listening that projects an intensity of color, mood, and contemplation we might associate with the luminosity of certain minimalist painters and sculptors, including Agnes Martin and Sol LeWitt. Reich is one of America’s genuine innovators and perhaps the greatest exponent of musical minimalism. But his minimalism, ironically, is truly one of surface.
Depth and variation are apparent beneath the externals of his work. Music for Pieces of Wood was written in 1973 and is designed for five players. It is written for claves, which are percussion instruments with particular pitches. There are two types used in this piece, the so-called standard and the “African” claves. The clave, which comes from Cuba (the word in Spanish means “key”), is made of two pieces of hardwood that the player beats.
Audiences may be most familiar with the instrument in its use in the rhumba and other Latin American dances. They have been used in orchestral works of Varèse, Copland and Berio. The claves in this piece are designed to create a particular pitch differentiation. The composer specifies the physical arrangement of the players. While the notation is precise, the composer asks the players to repeat each bar “approximately” the number of times indicated, perhaps giving the performers a chance to vary not only the character but the duration of each performance.
Edifice was commissioned by Washington State University for the dedication of the new addition to French Administration known as the Lighty Building and received it’s world premier on October 19, 1996. It was originally written for trumpet and electronic percussion using the Roland Octopad Trigger System controlling a Roland MT-32 Sound Module. The 2007 version is a re-orchestration of the synthesizer sounds for traditional percussion instruments.
Edifice, which means “structure” attempts to create three contrasting musical scenarios. The first of the three movements, entitled Rising Pillars, captures the building’s physical structure made up of high ceilings and tall support columns. The second, Nocturne represents the mood of the building in the dead of night when all is quiet. The final movement is entitled The Work Day and is intended to humorously capture the daily “hustle and bustle” of day-to-day employment. The re-orchestrated version received it’s premier on February 9, 2007 at the WSU Festival of Contemporary Art Music in Pullman, WA. It was performed by the Washington State University Percussion Ensemble under the direction of the composer with David Turnbull as trumpet soloist.
Contrasts is in an ABA format with the outer sections focusing on the long and sustained sounds of the ensemble in a slow tempo. The middle section, in a fast tempo, utilizes short, staccato sounds in a linear and pointillistic style and exploits contrasts in timbre, dynamics and pitched vs. non-pitched instruments. The work was commissioned by the University of Arkansas percussion ensemble under the direction of Chalon Ragsdale.
This concert is open to the public and without charge.