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)
Sample 2 (Click Arrow to Play)
The Ethos Series
$40 - # 0780 - Guowei, Wang: Two Pieces for Percussion Quartet [14 min.] (includes 4 parts, and score)
(notes from the composer) This composition draws from the duality of life – the intellectual and physical spheres. The first movement is outwardly loose but is bound together by a stream of intellectual consciousness. Bathed in Zen-like spiritualism and meditative calm, it aspires toward the
expression of the sublime in Chinese aesthetics. The second movement invokes tangible and concrete forms in motion, accented by Beijing opera motifs.
Sample 1 (Click Arrow to Play)
$40 - # 0693 - Harrison, Joel: Faith in Nights for percussion quartet and piano [18-19 mins] (includes score and 5 parts)
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)
Sample 2 (Click Arrow to Play)
Sample 3 (Click Arrow to Play)
The Ethos Series
$35 - # 0777 - La Barbera, John: MarimBa Ba Suite
for percussion quartet
[8:30 min.] (includes 4 parts, and score)
Inspired by traditional rhythms of the Northeast of Brazil, the MarimBa BaSuite draws upon Maculele and Baiao. Common in the states of Ceará,Maranhao, and Bahia, these rhythms found in ceremonial folk dances haveemerged as independent musical styles. The Maculele comes from the Jorge de
Bastoes (stick dance), while the Baiao is derived from the Bemba-Meu-Bol (Dance of the Ox).
Sample 1 (Click Arrow to Play)
The Ethos Series
$30 - # 0782 - Levin, Robert: Break It Down for percussion quartet
[10:30 min.] (includes 4 parts, and score)
Break It Down explores the ancestral relationship between the American drum set and the traditional West African Drum Ensemble, emphasizing the polyrhythmic and polyanthropomorphic roots of the American drumset and the rhythms played on it.
Sample 1 (Click Arrow to Play)
$25 - # 0703 - McClure, Robert: ...of the Earth for percussion quartet [7 min.] (includes 4 parts and score)
$30 - # 0677 - Morales-Matos, Rolando: Estados Animicos (State of Being) – quartet for 2 marimbas, timpani, and percussion [12-15 min.] (includes 4 parts and score)
Facing the Mirror (recorded by the juilliard percussion ensemble)
This tour de force for percussion quartet and tape, explores the human voice and it's relationship to percussion instruments. The tape consists of vocal sounds from 4 languages-English, Spanish, Hebrew, and Russian. All meaning of each of the languages is stripped away and reduced to sounds creating a new dialect in combination with the instruments. The performers are placed in the 4 corners of the hall with their almost identical set-up of instruments, a head mic for uttering phonetic sounds, and an output speaker, creating a surround sound of continuousmovement around the hall.
Facing the Mirror sample (Click Arrow to Play)
$30 - # 0775 - Pereira, Joseph: Repousse for percussion quartet [16 min.] (includes 4 parts and score)
$25 - # 0804 - Seo, Ju Ri: Four for Flexatones for four flexatones [7-9 min.] (includes 4 parts and score)
This piece begins with a key element in Glen’s approach to music and drumming: the synchronization of voice and drum. His studies of South Indian and Arabic drumming introduced Glen to the value and depth of this connection. The relationship of 2 to 1, in pitch terms, an octave, is manifested in this piece through interaction of the voices and drums in various multiples of an octave; i.e. 8 to 1 (4 octaves), 4 to 1 (2 octaves), and 2 to 1 (1 octave). Glen credits this melodic approach to drumming to the influence of Arabic drumming. Much of the rhythmic interplay that happens during the course of “Sol Tunnels” is inspired by his appreciation of South Indian drumming.
Sample 1 (Click Arrow to Play)
The Ethos Series
$30 - # 0781 - Welch, Matthew: Loch Fyne Variations for mallet quartet
[12 min.] (includes 4 parts, and score)
(notes from the composer)
In my early years of Scottish bagpipe playing, I always thought the pipes sounded like the perfect combination of metallic and wooden sounds due to its raucous reedy and shrill nature. Soon this preference for elemental sonic combinations was reinvigorated by hearing Gamelan and other instrumental combinations in South East Asian ensemble musics. This piece orchestrates various possible couplings, dialogues, hybridizations and negotiations that these disparate idioms may yield in of set variations on a basic underlying melodic backbone. Loch Fyne is a beautiful little lake located in the Highlands of Scotland. This piece was commissioned and premiered by Ethos Percussion with help from the Jerome Foundation.
