Commissioned by a consortium of marimbists including Makoto Nakura, Andy Eldridge, Brian Zator, Francisco Perez, and Justin Alexander, this piece was premiered by Makoto Nakura during the 2013 European American Musical Alliance Summer Music Program in Salle Franck at La Schola Cantorum in Paris, France.  This recording was made by Nakura in Nada Hall in Kobe, Japan.

Prelude and Fugue in E-flat Minor

My Quintet for Winds No. 2: Passacaglia was commissioned by oboist Abby Hawthorne for a performance at the Eastman School of Music in 2020 and was completed in the same year. It is an unfolding set of variations on a ground bass and traverses a number of styles and affects that are organized into internal movements based on Baroque musical genres: a ricercare, a toccata, a fantasia, and a finale, with a sinfonia opening the work. Snippets of the music of Bach are used throughout the work in various combinations with original material. These quotations are meant as homages to Bach, and the other "Baroque-isms" in the work are my way of attempting to forge a connection between the spirit of experimentation that pervaded much Baroque music and a similar spirit that is part and parcel with our current era. The work is affectionately dedicated to Abby Hawthorne, my friend, colleague, and former student.

Quintet For Winds No. 2 - Passacaglia (world Premiere)

Whispered Interior

Ghost Boxes was inspired by a story I once heard on NPR, filed by Yuki Noguchi, about the disappearance of large “box” stores such as standalone department stores and even shopping malls, mostly due to the rise of online shopping. Since these brick-and-mortar artifacts have ceased to serve their original function, they have been
abandoned, and they now appear as “ghost boxes,” dotting the American landscape.

The image of these “ghost boxes” was irresistible to me as a way into a type of music that could result from a meditation upon it. These old store buildings can serve as halls of mirrors into the past. One might imagine walking through one of them and remembering (or half remembering, or completely misremembering, or simply imagining) music that once played there. Was that a snatch of jazz, or easy listening, or some old movie theme repurposed for a shopping experience? Was that some sort of ambient string track that Brian Eno or Anne Dudley might have composed? Was that the 101 Strings orchestra in an outtake of Stravinsky or Satie at their most
meditative? Rather than simple pastiche, I imagine this music co-existing in one’s memory along with conversation from shoppers, Intercom announcements and any other noise that one might remember from these environments. For me, they call to mind my own childhood in which accompanying my parents to one of these stores was, simultaneously, exciting and comforting. Ultimately, the work is a remixed memory of a particular slice of childhood of which I am particularly fond, so I suppose, as surreal as the work is, it is a piece about love. 

The piece is composed for four flutes, two oboes, English horn, two clarinets, bass clarinet, contrabass clarinet, two bassoons, contrabassoon, four horns, three trumpets, two trombones, bass trombone, two tubas, timpani, percussion, electric guitar, electronics, piano, harp, and strings.

Ghost Boxes

Performed by the University of Houston Percussion Ensemble, Blake Wilkins, conductor - featured on the Albany Records release Not Here But There (2009).  The title Circus Plenus Clamor Ingens Ianuae Tensae means “The circus is full. An enormous clamor. The gates are bulging.” It is taken from an ancient Roman board game called Felix Six, or “Lucky Sixes.” The board for the game would have a clever saying etched or carved into its surface that had six words which each contained six letters. The piece is not a musical representation of a Roman board game, but its title is not merely decorous, either, and therefore functionless. It is reflective of the organizational aspects of music. The piece is scored for six players, it has six formal sections, each bar has six groupings of six notes, the pitch material makes frequent use of sixes (interlocking hexachords, a whole tone scale—which contains six pitches, intervals of major and minor sixths), etc. Harmonically, the piece moves from opaque twelve-tone textures through triadic and modal harmony before terminating on a repetitious single pitch (F, the sixth letter of the alphabet). It further employs many unnecessary doublings and even triplings of parts. In fact, in many instances all six players play exactly the same passage in unison. This characteristic of the music gives it a distinctive non-western flavor. The players are given the direction “obsessive, ritualistic” to define their approach to the music.

Circus Plenus Clamor Ingens Ianuae Tensae (variations for six marimbists)

Performed by Southern Methodist University's Meadows Percussion Ensemble (April 2011) - Jon Lee, conductor

Duruflé Variations is a marimba quartet in four movements, and each movement is based on a piece or a movement of a piece of organ music by Maurice Dufuflé (1902-1986). The works referenced are Suite, Op. 5, Scherzo, Op. 2, Prélude, Adagio, et Chorale varié sur le thème du "Veni Creator," Op. 4, and Prélude et Fugue sur le nom d'Alain, Op. 7. The music was inspired by hearing Dufuflé's Prélude et Fugue sur le nom d'Alain in Saint-Etienne-du-Mont Cathedral in Paris, France, where Dufuflé served as organist from 1929 until his death. The organ in Saint-Etienne-du-Mont was built under his supervision, and its kaleidoscopic colors and registration served as a model for the instrumentation of 
the piece. I have attempted to replicate organ spacing in combination with the rhythmic qualities of the marimba, as well as combining Dufuflé's effortless, extended harmonies with the stepwise character of Gregorian chants, on which he based many instrumental and vocal works.


Duruflé Variations (marimba quartet)

Third movement of my song cycle La Razon del Viaje on texts by Enrique Gonzalez Martinez. Performed by Sydney Frodsham (mezzo), Artem Arutyunyan (piano), and the Meadows Percussion Ensemble of SMU's Meadows School of the Arts (Jon Lee, conductor).

La Razon Del Viaje (III. Danza Elefantina) - mezzo soprano, piano, percussion quartet

The third movement of my Quintet for Winds

Quintet For Winds (premiere) III. Finale

The second movement of my work in progress, Danses Éphémères, for violin and piano. Performed by Erik Rohde (violin) and Clare Longendyke (piano).

Danses Éphémères (II. Sarabande) - violin and piano

Homage using (mostly) the same instrumentation as Christopher Rouse's Bonham but in the style of Danny Carey.  Drum set soloist and percussion septet.  Performed here by the Meadows Percussion Ensemble, Jon Lee - conductor, Jacob Frasier - drum set.

Carey

Marimba quartet commissioned by the Troy University Percussion Ensemble (T. Adam Blackstock, director) for its performance at the 2012 PASIC in Austin, TX.  Performed live in this recording on October 23, 2012

Africa Hocket

The music of Lane Harder has been called “vibrant,” “highly-crafted,” (Percussive Notes) “dramatic,” “aggressive and engaging” (Austin American Statesman) and “meditative” (American Record Guide). Recent performances of his music have been by Bachanalia Chamber Orchestra, St. Petersburg State Orchestra, Catholic University of America Symphony Orchestra, Peabody Opera Theatre, University of Texas New Music Ensemble, CLUTCH Wind Ensemble (UT), marimbist Makoto Nakura (Young Concert Artists), soprano Rebecca Siler (Opera Philadelphia), The Ju Percussion Group, the University of Georgia Governor Honors Program Percussion Ensemble, the Lone Star Wind Orchestra Percussion Ensemble and many percussion ensembles in North America, Europe and Asia. His music has appeared on programs at the 2004, 2012 and 2013 Percussive Arts Society International Conventions and the 2008 Percussion Master Series in Taipei. His performances and his original music appear on the Albany, Gasparo, and bu.hanan record labels. His music is published by KPP and Rassel Editions of New York. Harder’s music has been recognized with multiple awards from ASCAP as well as awards from NACUSA, Voices of Change, the Percussive Arts Society, The Florence Gould Foundation and the Texas Music Teachers Association.

Major studies in counterpoint, harmony, and analysis have been with composer and theorist Dr. Philip Lasser. Composition teachers include Narcis Bonet, Michel Merlet, Donald Grantham, Dan Welcher, Chris Theofanidis, Robert Keeley, Ross Lorraine, Kevin Hanlon and Simon Sargon. Harder holds degrees from Southern Methodist University, Johns Hopkins University and the University of Texas, and he completed a year of resident study at Kings College London. He recently served as a Graduate Fellow for Texas Performing Arts, a position made possible by a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. A composer, percussionist and teacher living in Dallas, Harder teaches composition and music theory at Southern Methodist University. He has recently served as Assistant Director of Music at Jesuit College Preparatory School in Dallas and as an adjunct faculty member of the Peabody Institute and Johns Hopkins University. He further serves on the faculty and administration of the European American Musical Alliance Summer Program in Paris, France, where he teaches counterpoint, keyboard harmony and score reading courses and serves as Program Coordinator. Harder is a member of ASCAP, NACUSA, and CMS and currently serves on the Percussive Arts Society Composition Committee.

Lane Harder

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