music for percussion ensemble

Marimba Peace for marimba quintet was completed in Carbondale, IL in 2006. It was premiered by the SIUC Percussion Group on November 6, 2006 in Shryock Auditorium on the Southern Illinois University Carbondale campus. The work was composed using serial techniques to control duration and pitch content. The tone row (color) is CEDGFBA (all naturals) and the duration row (talea) is 62,14, 56, 20, 44, 32, 38 eighth notes.

S P H E R E S for tam tams and prepared piano was composed in December 2010 in Carbondale, IL. The work is scored for sixteen tam tams (commonly recognized as gongs) ranging from 12” to 36” in diameter and prepared piano. The variety of timbres from the tam tams and piano are created by the various implements used to activate them, including: a violin bow, 12” bolt, wood drumstick, soft yarn mallet, hard vibraphone mallet, hard plastic mallet, plastic hotel key cards, superball mallets, marbles, clam shells, triangle beater, wire, rosined fishing line, and wire brushes. Additionally, small tam tams are dipped into water while sounding to create pitch glissandi, and the piano is prepared with aluminum pot lids, small cymbals, Japanese rin, paper, and a CD on the strings. The work was intended for realization in three possible ways: 1. Acoustically in real time using five performers (one pianist and four percussionists playing four tam tams each); 2. Electroacoustically in real time using 1-4 performers with 1-4 prerecorded parts being played back during performance; 3. Acousmatically where the work has been prerecorded and is then played back in real time, preferably as a 5.1 surround-sound mix but stereo is also acceptable. The present acousmatic realization was recorded by Brian Wagner and performed by Ron Coulter (percussion) and Jay Needham (piano) on January 4, 2011; it was spatialized into a 5.1 version by Kelly Caringer, Ron Coulter, and Jay Needham on January 5, 2011. As of February 2019 the work has not been performed live in its acoustic or electroacoustic versions.

Stars, Tears, and Ice Picks (raining down upon me) for 6-12 Turkish cymbals was composed on March 8, 2014 in Carbondale, IL. This is music of simultaneity (re: Stuart Saunders Smith), meaning that the parts are played at uncoordinated tempi and each performer independently picks any of the nine parts to perform. A variety of cymbal sizes and weights are used along with various implements to create a broad timbre gamut. The result is that each iteration of the work is different in the composite resultant but identifiable in the generalities enough to create coherence across all performances. As of November 2023 the work has not been performed live.

Cajon Trio for Nate #1 and Nate #2 (JAM BOX) was composed in Carbondale, IL between December 2007 and February 2008 and is dedicated to two of the author’s former students, Nathan Staley and Nathan Kingery. The work was premiered on April 7, 2008 at Shryock Auditorium in Carbondale, IL by the SIUC Percussion Group. Cajons of the Peruvian/Spanish type with string snares should be graduated in pitch high to low (players 1-3 respectively). Various attack points, parts of the hand, and extended techniques are utilized, in addition to hand claps, and playing on the thighs. A freely improvised introduction and solo sections for players one and three offer opportunities for improvisation against the otherwise composed and rhythmically dense material.

For Johanna Beyer (2015) is scored for speaking voice, large woodblock, giant tam tam, three lion’s roars, and four to sixteen-or-more triangles. Johanna Magdalena Beyer (1888-1944) was a German-born composer and pianist, considered one of the Ultra-Modernists of early 20th Century American Art music. Beyer was an integral composer and networker in the development of percussion music in the Western canon, alongside Henry Cowell, John Cage, Lou Harrison, William Russell, and others. The poem, “TOTAL ECLIPSE,” used in this composition was penned by Beyer and the instrumentation is a nod to Beyer’s preferences in several of her compositions. Anyone familiar with Beyer’s percussion works will recognize the woodblock part and lion’s roars as iconic. The composition is notated using traditional music notation, however the relationships of the performers are not precisely fixed, rather they are coordinated within timeframes allowing individual performers a degree of choice during the realization of the work.

Repose is a duo for marimbas adapted from a previous composition, Repose for clarinet and bassoon, composed in Youngstown, Ohio in 2001; it was adapted and revised in 2007 in Carbondale, IL. The work was premiered at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, Altgeld Hall, by the SIUC Percussion Group on April 23, 2007 (Nate Kingery & Eric Hendrickson, performers). It has been described as Hindemith-esque.

The Bleak, Disconsolate Pulchritude is a quintet composed for the Casper College Percussion Group and completed on November 28, 2014 in Casper, Wyoming. The work is scored for 16 spoxe and feedback. Spoxe are circular aluminum frames that come from tunable drums called roto toms, which can be from six to eighteen inches in diameter. The feedback is accomplished with two to three microphones (Shure SM57, SM58, or equivalent) that are each plugged into small guitar amps (10 to 20 watts each). The composition’s title was inspired by the vast Wyoming landscape, and is also fitting to the sound quality (timbre, envelope, pitch) of the spoxe, which have a mellow, bell-like tone. The composition is notated using proportional notation for each of the five parts; there is no score, as the five parts have a relationship determined by each of the five performers. This sort of organization of parts without a score is what the composer, Stuart Saunders Smith, calls “music of simultaneity.”

…the tiny rooms of starvation and madness. This beautiful phrase comes from the poem, “You Tell Me What It Means” by Charles Bukowski and his book, “The flash of lightning behind the mountain.” The theme of, and actual phrase, tiny rooms, appears throughout the writing of Bukowski over his lifetime – a literal memory as well as a metaphor of Bukowski’s personal experience and his views of society, economic systems, cultural norms, human limitations, et cetera. I had been wrestling for months with how to structure and subsequently notate the various ideas, or sound worlds, within this composition, and when I came across this phrase I immediately knew that it would be the composition’s title.

In addition to being greatly impacted by Bukowski’s writing, I am also fascinated by the solo percussion work “Fragments II” by the percussionist, Jean-Charles François. I had not fully absorbed (maybe accepted is the better term…) François’ approach to structure and organization in “Fragments II” until I came across the phrase by Bukowski. The collision of these two ideas (fragments, rooms) or turns of phrase (sound, words) finally made sense in terms of structure and organization. So, this work is a series of tiny rooms (RE: Bukowski) or fragments (RE: François) – in more classical terms, vignettes, movements, or scenes – unrelated at the micro level yet inextricably bound on the macro level of composition; each fragment or room is stark and discrete. Any number of the rooms may be used, or not, in any performance and the order of the rooms is variable.

The work is scored for eight snare drums, 16 glockenspiel bars, 16 triangles, 24 bell tree bells, 8 crotales, 4 rin, 8 plastic bottles, 4 Musser 2-step fiberglass mallets, 8 bass bows, 4 threaded metal rods, whistling, 8 audio playback devices, and a variety of implements. It was composed between May and September of 2018 for the Youngstown State University Percussion Ensemble and it’s director, Dr. Glenn Schaft. It was premiered at the Ford Theater on the YSU campus on November 13, 2018.