MEDIA

Consciousness Floats into the Wind – Jeff Herriott

Consciousness Floats Into The Wind is section 5 from The Stone Tapestry (2014), which also includes an additional percussion quartet. A concert-length work (60-65 minutes), Consciousness Floats Into The Wind sits in the center of the work and serves as the focal point for many of the piece’s larger ideas. The Stone Tapestry was commissioned by the Barlow Endowment for Music Composition for the ensemble Due East. – Jeff Herriott

SWITCHBACK – Jim Pywell

 This is the first movement of a 3-movement work composed originally in the year 2000 for the young British group Backbeat Percussion Quartet. In the first and third movements the pairs of players stand opposite one another in the same way that players of the amadinda in Uganda sit on opposite sides of the instrument. So this was an experiment to see what kind of music might result from players facing one another on the marimba where the keys are laid out in a different configuration more like the piano. Backbeat Percussion Quartet gave the premiere in the Royal Festival Hall, London on June 20th 2000, and subsequently performed the work worldwide. Kind thanks to Backbeat for their consultation during the composition process. -Jim Pywell

Music for 18 Musicians – Steve Reich

Music for 18 Musicians is approximately 55 minutes long. The first sketches were made for it in May 1974 and it was completed in March 1976. Although its steady pulse and rhythmic energy relate to many of my earlier works, its instrumentation, structure and harmony are new.
As to instrumentation, Music for 18 Musicians is new in the number and distribution of instruments: violin, cello, 2 clarinets doubling bass clarinet, 4 women’s voices, 4 pianos, 3 marimbas, 2 xylophones and metallophone (vibraphone with no motor). All instruments are acoustical. The use of electronics is limited to microphones for voices and some of the instruments. – Steve Reich

Clash Music – Nicolaus A. Huber

Wer liebt nicht die zauberhafte Welt der mechanischen Musikinstrumente, ihr mechanisches Musiktheater mit Trommeln und Becken, die mit Schlegeln wie von unsichtbarer Hand bewegt zum Rhythmus getrieben werden oder mit lebensgetreu nachgebildeten Figuren, deren Finger sich im Klangtempo bewegen, die mit ihren Augen blinzeln, lächeln und sich sogar verbeugen können?
Sich als solche Figur zu verkleiden und auf einem so gutmütigen Instrument wie einem Beckenpaar ein Solo zu spielen, war meine Idee für “Clashmusic”
Sie sollte überall dazwischenpassen, gleichzeitig voller mini-theatralischer Assoziationen sein und sich der Verkleidungsidee überhaupt nicht anpassen.
Expressivität verrät. 

- N.A.Huber (1988) 
Herbstfestival was composed in 1988 as a commission from Bernhard Wulff and the state of Baden-Württenberg and premiered in Freiburg in October of 1989.