THE MAGIC BOX, a set of 12+ pieces for vibraphone & marimba

From my collection of NEW MUSIC for MALLET INSTRUMENTS, THE MAGIC BOX http://cs-music.com/magicbox.html

STARGAZING I: Three voices modulating metrically through different textures and constellations of tones, like points of light threaded together in a clear night sky... .  .    . 

DUO #vibraphone #marimba From THE MAGIC BOX: 
Stargazing I webscore http://bit.ly/18qiUI4 
score pdf http://bit.ly/IuziKI 
performancemodel mp3 http://bit.ly/Infpps

Most the MAGIC BOX pieces are performed both by heart, and twice, w/ the two performers switching parts. You'll be amazed at the difference this makes. Your audience will love it!

For study help, contact me at cliff@picture-poems.com
Rehearsal time for serious performers via SKYPE w/
handle "cliffcrego"

ALLOW 2 or 3 week response time, as I'm also a wilderness
photographer, and frequently out of the picture-poems
Office doing fieldwork.

from THE MAGIC BOX: "Star Gazing I," for vibraphone & marimba

from THE MAGIC BOX Project, "A one page 3/4 honky-tonk on top of a rock-solid 4/4 bass," on the web at:
http://www.cs-music.com/magicbox.html

This is a little encore piece. Make sure to switch parts at the repeat, if possible, without missing a beat! 

download mp3 [2.5 Mb] http://bit.ly/TlFXGT 

webscore http://www.cs-music.com/magicbox/4-square-1.html

performance pdf http://bit.ly/JbRkTm

from THE MAGIC BOX: "4 Square" for vibraphone & marimba

BLUE MONK variations is both a musical homage to the great pianist and composer, Thelonious MONK, as well as a kind of improvised meditation on the tune. It's just a way of thinking about music. Instead of writing words ABOUT music, which, of course, I'm doing now, we sit down and compose a piece about a piece, as a kind of playful journey into the wilds which might lie ahead.

The pieces was written for my mallet virtuosi friends, Niels Meliefste and Claire Edwards, of DUO VERTIGO

GO TO webscore w/ color dynamics raindbow [purple=ppp >>> red=ff] http://bit.ly/g26GM5
DOWNLOAD performance score pdf http://bit.ly/TIWTvL
DOWNLOAD performance model mp3 http://bit.ly/gWBVeq

BLUE MONK variations, for vibraphone & marimba

Jaehyuck Choi (1994) - Signal (2022)
for soprano saxophone and trombone (2022)

Live at Concours Nicati 2023
26.08.2023

Duo Signal 
Alejandro Oliván - soprano saxophone
Adrián Albaladejo Díaz - trombone

https://www.duosignal.net/

Audio recording: Christophe Egea
Audio mix and mastering: Clément Marie

Salquin Konzertsaal, Hochschule Luzern-Musik

Jaehyuck Choi - Signal (2022) - live, Luzern - 26.08.2023

Special thanks to my good friend, Simone de HAAN, Australian new music trombonist extraordinaire…I couldn’t have done this project without his help.

“What Israel is doing today cannot be condoned, and to invoke the horrors of the past to justify those of the present is gross hypocrisy.”

TEXT of Bertrand Russell’s Last letter used here is at http://www.picture-poems.com/pdfs/russells-last-letter.pdf

Feel free to make your own, I am sure, much better performance of the text. The track for the orchestral background (minus voice) is here:  http://picture-poems.com/mp3/russell_no-voice.wav

IMAGE: Bertrand RUSSELL, 1957

RUSSELL’S 1970 LAST LETTER, a call for peace in the Middle East

PHOTO: YUM CHENMO--"Great Wisdom Mother" at EWAM, Garden of 1000 Buddhas, Jocko Valley, Arlee, Montana

SEE TEXT at: http://picture-poems.com/photoweek/1000-buddhas_9-29-10_8bw.html

RETWEET #buddhism A QUESTION OF #NONVIOLENCE, OR NON-EXISTENCE—a meditation pdf [140k] http://bit.ly/1nkSlvg mp3 [3.7Mb] http://bit.ly/1nkSjDB

A QUESTION OF NON-VIOLENCE, OR NON-EXISTENCE,  a meditation . . .

PHOTO: Arinica (Arnica montana) & Butterfly, the Alps

POSTER is at: http://www.cs-music.com/features/cards/poster_sonnet-XIV-2.html

POSTER pdf is at: http://www.cs-music.com/features/cards/poster_sonnet-XIV-2.pdf

DOWNLOAD: #FreeFriday RILKE IN THE WALLOWAS 80 new tr. & 120 photos, by CLIFF CREGO pdf 212 p/ 208 Mb http://bit.ly/mA3Ly7

RILKE: Sonnets to Orpheus, XIV [second part], German/English, tr. Cliff Crego

TIMELINE is a part of my MAGIC BOX project for mallet instruments http://www.cs-music.com/magicbox.html

Timeline was written for my former teacher, mentor & friend, the late American composer, Donald Erb, on the happy occasion of his 80th birthday.

SEE INTRO to Timeline at: http://www.cs-music.com/drums/intro-timeline.html

GO TO iPad webscore at: http://www.cs-music.com/drums/timeline-1.html

DOWNLOAD score at: http://cs-music.com/drums/timeline.pdf

DOWNLOAD parts at: http://cs-music.com/drums/timeline_parts.pdf


TIMELINE, a vibraphone & marimba duo, for Donald Erb (1928-2008)

Premiere performance, by Niels Meliefste & Joeke Hoekstra, at the Royal Conservatory, the Hague, the Netherlands SEE webscore at: http://bit.ly/10Br4ur DOWNLOAD pdf at: http://bit.ly/1rVOS2v

DUO VERTIGO, w/ Niels Meliefste & Clare Edwards, has an excellent recording of the INVENTION, as well as three other MAGIC BOX pieces, on their CD, "Vertigo One." http://amzn.to/1rVNWv6

Bo to THE MAGIC BOX project, for mallet instruments, at: http://www.cs-music.com/magicbox.html


from THE MAGIC BOX, "An Invention in 2 Voices,, for vibraphone & marimba

TWO STREAMS OF complementary movement, one in 5, the other in 3...[This is just a little 2 minute piece, so, if played separately, you might try performing it twice while switching parts; it's a good way to really master the independent, composite, polymetric rhythms...]

WEBSCORE is at: http://www.cs-music.com/magicbox/magicbox-1.html

Performance score pdf [FOUR a3 pages/88k] is at: http://www.cs-music.com/magicbox/pdfs/download_magicbox.pdf 

MINI WEBSITE for the MAGIC BOX Project is at: http://www.cs-music.com/magicbox.html

THE MAGIC BOX, 1st piece in a project for vibraphone & marimba

A 17 seventeen-step poem is a kind of generalized HAIKU. How it is notated in the score isn’t relevant. Only the 17 steps as we hear/sense/feel them as a dance, a pattern of movement, is important.

A SEQUENCE strings 17 of these seventeen-step poems together, like strings of lights on a Christmas tree. Each string has a different color or theme or center.

There are 17 SEQUENCES. Here, we hear the first nine.

Each numbered pattern we hear is a single image or experience from a bike packing pilgrimage made through the mountains of IDAHO and OREGON. 120 days / 80 camps. Many more, new special places and new friends.

TEXT of SEQUENCES I through XI… (rough draft…) is at http://www.picture-poems.com/pdfs/lost-in-idaho.pdf

IMAGE: My bike packing rig, MISSOULA. I cache the bike, and periodically change over to boots and backpack for wilderness photography work, and then hike back out to my bike.

LOST IN IDAHO, A pilgrim’s notebook….Sequences I through IX

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xG3XXq8_01w

The immediate inspiration for my 'Fragment 16 (Xenogothic Triple Canon)' was a piece by the composer Matt Barber (https://soundcloud.com/brbrofsvl ) titled 'Prelude and Canon for Wind Quintet' ( which you can listen to here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vhKDdcFm8l0 ). The title belies his piece's compositional virtuosity: the canon is in five different superimposed speeds, and uses late romantic tonal language. It caused quite a stir at Eastman when it was first played there, despite its short length. Matt's musicianship has been inspirational to me since I was 18 years old, and in some ways I feel like I am always several steps behind him. So I also wanted to write a polytempic canon in a historical contrapuntal style, and Avignon around 1370 was my target.

I failed, quickly: my piece is not strictly in three different consistent speeds (much too difficult), but the melodies in each voice, otherwise all direct copies of one another, do get pervasively pushed and pulled like taffy into and out of shifting speeds. I partly attribute my failure to my beloved teacher, Jean-François Charles, who suggested “Why not write a canon at the [melodic distance of a] 7th? ”, suggesting that canons at the 5th and octave were rather passé. I took him up on this, but it made life harder. For example, for technical reasons, descending scales were now basically off limits, and descending sixths become sort-of necessary as an escape hatch, both features which were uncommon in the melodic style of the medieval period. Nevertheless, it was great fun getting the piece to sound as 'medieval' as possible given these constraints. I can't take credit for the coinage 'Xenogothic'; that honor belongs to microtonal theorist and composer Margo Schulter (https://www.bestii.com/~mschulter/QuickTour.html). Please look up her and Matt's music if you get the chance.

Thanks to the JACK Quartet  for this wonderful performance.

Fragment 16 (Xenogothic Triple Canon)

In the silence of the night, the bubo bubo releases its voice into the valley with all its majesty; its depth rivals that of the night itself.

recorded at midnight in Niğde Aladağlar, April 30, 2025

Bubo Bubo (Eagle Owl) Aladaglar, Emli Vadisi

Pied Butcherbird song at dawn, accompanied by White-winged Fairywren, Trillers, Miners, Emu booms,  Magpies et al, in the NSW outback near Lightning Ridge

Pied Butcherbird Sunrise Recital

Water loss on land adds to rising seas: global drying with gravity satellite expert Jay Famiglietti.  Is this planet actually a living cooperative? Explore with science journalist Ferris Jabr. Expect abrupt shifts in big systems, from ocean currents to ice - new science led by Sjoerd Terpstra.  Three interviews.

Global drying, Gaia & Abrupt Change

σαν της αυγής ονείρατα και σκιάχτρα σαν της νύχτας (like dreams of the dawn and scarecrows of the night) • for soprano, accordion & marimba • a sound illustration on poetry by Kostis Palamas • composed by Christos Farmakis in 2020

0:00 Σιωπή | Silence
2:25 Μάγισσες αρμέγουν το φεγγάρι | Witches milking the moon
5:24 Βροχή από αίμα | Rain of blood

performed by KIMI ensemble • https://www.kimi-ensemble.com/
Þórgunnur Anna Örnólfsdóttir • soprano
Katerina Anagnostidou • marimba
Jónas Ásgeirsson • accordion

http://christosfarmakis.com/

like dreams of the dawn and scarecrows of the night

Composer. Writer. Photographer. Former conductor & founder of the ASKO ensemble.

On a bike/ski/hike trek of the Pacific Northwest studying native plants & climate breakdown 🌲 from sagebrush sea to whitebark pine. Composing off-grid the whole way.

#Sun2Sound 🌕 on Bluesky

THINKING LIKE A STONEPINE, a soundpoem manifesto https://vimeo.com/844665859

“LOVE & WATER, three thought poems w/ coda, PHAROS for small orchestra, “Nightwind”” https://vimeo.com/847079690 

CURRENTLY on mt bike/ski/climbing trek through Pacific Northwest, working on a photobook about WHITEBARK PINE COLLAPSE and CLIMATE CRISIS. BASES in the WALLOWAS | AMSTERDAM | ALPS. 

WEEKLY photo/poetry updates at www.picture-poems.com & THE CIRCLE IN THE SQUARE new music, poetry & dance performance project at www.cs-music.com

ALWAYS ON THE LOOKOUT for progressive, tech-savy, instrumental virtuosi interested in dialogue & collaborative undertakings.

CONTACT cliff@picture-opoems.com
Or on SKYPE or FACETIME @cliffcrego

MUSIC? The one thing humans do,
that makes the rest of nature jealous.

from THE MAGIC BOX: "Star Gazing I," for vibraphone & marimba

Cliff Crego

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