Percussion Ensemble Favorites

Commissioned by the current and former members of the Boise Philharmonic Percussion Section, Sunward/Onward is a keyboard percussion sextet dedicated to Dr. John Baldwin on the occasion of his retirement from Boise State University after 50 years of teaching. The piece draws inspiration from the poem “My Triumph” by John Greenleaf Whittier, which truly captures the essence of passing the torch.

Sunward/Onward (keyboard  percussion sextet) - Nathan Daughtrey

"This Dance With You" takes inspiration from jazz and minimalism. It is a fragile and intimate duet for piano and marimba, where the instruments alternate roles like partners in a dance.

Purchase Sheet Music

This Dance With You (duet for marimba & piano) - Jane K

Celebrating the legacy of Marcellus Brown’s tenure as director of bands at Boise State University, "Through an Open Door" is a lush setting of Dvorák’s "Goin’ Home" that cleverly marries the chromatic spelling of “MARCELLUS” with the original spiritual. The arrangement stays true to the original while adding new countermelodies, re-harmonization, and fresh colors and textures.

INSTRUMENTATION
Piccolo
Flute 1 & 2
Oboe
Bassoon 1 & 2
B-flat Clarinet 1, 2, 3
Bass Clarinet
Soprano Saxophone
Alto Saxophone
Tenor Saxophone
Baritone Saxophone

B-flat Trumpet 1, 2, 3
F Horn 1, 2, 3, 4
Trombone 1 & 2
Bass Trombone
Euphonium 1 & 2
Tuba 1 & 2

Piano
Timpani
Percussion 1: Chimes [shared], Glockenspiel
Percussion 2: Vibraphone, Crotales, Chimes [shared]
Percussion 3: Ocean Drum [shared], Bell Tree, Triangle, Suspended Cymbal
Percussion 4: Suspended Cymbal, Concert Bass Drum, Ocean Drum [shared]

Through An Open Door: A Setting of "Goin' Home" (Band Gr. 4.5) - Nathan Daughtrey

Based on a colorful poem by Federico García Lorca with vivid imagery and a wonderful arc, "The Cry" is a work for 12 percussionists commissioned by the University of Oklahoma Percussion Orchestra, directed by Dr. Lance Drege. The work divides into 5 primary sections: 

Paisaje ("Landscape")
La Guitarra ("The Guitar")
El Grito ("The Cry")
Un Silencio Ondulado ("A Rolling Silence")
Tierra de Luz, Cielo de Tierra ("Earth of Light, Sky of Earth") 

Federico García Lorca was extremely interested in the Spanish gypsy music known as Cante Jondo (or "Deep Song"), which is the purist and most natural precursor to Flamenco music. It is filled with passionate melismatic singing and sparse guitar playing. Great care has been taken to differentiate between the more popular Flamenco form and Cante Jondo, always emphasizing that the latter is the purer and more serious of the two forms.

It is this struggle that is at the heart of "The Cry." The virtuosic melismatic singing is emulated throughout the ensemble in long flourishes that are full of twists and turns. The antiphonal castanet players help bring in the flamenco elements to the piece, as well as the sounds of flamenco dancers tapping, stomping and clapping in rhythm. Most important in composing this piece was that the beautiful words of García Lorca and the form of his poem are represented.

The Cry: An Andalusian Fantasy

"The Cruel Waters"
Composed by Adam Silverman, 2015
Performed by Troy University Percussion (T. Adam Blackstock, director)
Justis Davis, Andrew Patzig and Tyler Whitehead, marimbas
Recorded 2016 by Garnet House Productions
John W. Parks IV, engineer

The Cruel Waters

This is a small binary piece, which offers many opportunities to showcase various piano techniques. Tiny Monsters is a set of small character pieces, I composed, for the intermediate pianist. The melody is based off of a hymn I stumbled across titled, "The Bells of Hell Go ting-a-ling-a-ling." It was originally this horrible jaunty G-major melody that was just begging to be turned into the grotesque melody the title of the hymn suggests. I hope you enjoy!

Tiny Monsters - Hatchet the Clown

Score and more: http://www.stevenbryant.com/music/catalog/nothing-gold-can-stay

Nothing Gold Can Stay was commissioned as a surprise gift for Kevin Sedatole in honor of his first ten years at Michigan State University. His conducting students spanning that decade, led by Jamal Duncan and Armand Hall, banded together and approached me at the 2015 College Band Directors National Convention in Nashville about writing the work, and I knew immediately that I couldn’t refuse this special project, made all the more appropriate because my wife, Verena, was one of Kevin’s very first students at MSU.

The music is my deliberate attempt to write a chorale – something simple, beautiful, and familiar. The deceptive surface simplicity of Robert Frost’s poem seems to coincide with this music, particularly the paradoxical descending of dawn to day, all embodying the concept of felix culpa, or “lucky fall” – the idea that loss can bring greater good, and is in fact necessary.

Nothing Gold Can Stay (MSU World Premiere)

WANT IT. NEED IT. HAVE IT.
Composed by Adam Silverman (2015)
Performed by the RoseWind Duo: Clifford Leaman (alto saxophone) and Scott Herring (marimba)
From the 2016 CD "Devils Garden/Angels Landing" on Equilibrium records (EQ161). Used with permission.

www.equilibri.com
www.adambsilverman.com

WANT IT. NEED IT. HAVE IT.

ANTIQUE VIOLENCES : Concerto for Trumpet
Movement 1
by John Mackey

MIDI Demo
Commissioned by Michigan State University and The American Bandmasters Association
To premiere March 2017, CBDNA convention, Kansas City. Justin Emerich, trumpet.

Four movements in total, each depicting a type of violence. This movement (movement 1), portrays military violence, and imagines if the Revolutionary War had been fought against... I don't know. Where is the music modal and in 13/8? Macedonia?

Score available here: ostimusic.com/pdf/Mvt1-SCORE.pdf

John Mackey: Antique Violences - Mvt 1 demo

PAPER COVERS ROCK
Composed 2016 by Adam Silverman
Live world premiere performance by the Quey Percussion Duo at Weber Music Hall, University of Minnesota-Duluth on Nov. 21, 2016.

Paper Covers Rock

III. Jötenheim: The Land of the Giants - Nathan Daughtrey

Lost Souls for Percussion Quintet

Power Struggle for Percussion Ensemble

Shock Factor for Percussion Quintet

Nathan Daughtrey with the James Madison University Percussion Ensemble, Michael Overman, conducting.  Commissioned by Dr. Lisa Rogers (percussion professor at Texas Tech University), the first movement of the Concerto for Vibraphone and Percussion Ensemble received its premiere in November 2009 at the Percussive Arts Society International Convention (PASIC) in Indianapolis by Lisa Rogers and the Brazoswood High School Percussion Ensemble, directed by Eric Harper. It will be premiered in its entirety at the International Society for Music Education (ISME) Conference in Beijing, China in August 2010 by the Texas Tech University Percussion Ensemble, directed by Allan Shin, with Dr. Lisa Rogers as the vibraphone soloist. 
Notes: 
One of my favorite sources of inspiration for my compositions is poetry – especially that of Pablo Neruda. It's so passionate and filled with vivid imagery that it's just a blast to try and portray his words with music. I knew from the outset that Lisa Rogers (the commissioning party) wanted a 2-movement concerto, so I decided to try and find two poems with opposing themes and stumbled upon Neruda's collection "Ode to Opposites." I chose "Ode to Nighttime" and "Ode to Enchanted Light" which pit night against day.  For the first movement, Night’s Song, I tried to depict this mysterious, starry night that gradually turns dark and rainy. The phrases that really spoke to me and shaped the music were “behind daylight,” “you thrash around the sky,” “you run wild over the savage flow of rivers,” and rain and darkness are the blade of a singing sword while stars, or jasmine petals, gaze from blackened heights.” I love how Neruda describes daylight as being born nighttime, so I decided to make the movements attacca so that the second movement, Enchanted Light, bursts forth out of the first movement.  The second movement is much more sparkly and bright, depicting the “light dropping from the top of the sky.” The “cicada sending its sawing song high into the empty air” even makes an appearance when the ensemble vibraphone player places pennies on the bars and then bows those bars with optional help from a sizzle cymbal. Motives and themes from the first movement return in several spots throughout the second movement helping to unify the work. The soloist gets a workout as well in the tour-de-force second movement, unlike the much more introspective first movement.

Concerto for Vibraphone and Percussion Ensemble

Percussionist, composer, & educator Nathan Daughtrey (b. 1975) is a musical chameleon who uses his wide-ranging talents to adapt comfortably to a variety of environments. As a performing artist and clinician for Yamaha percussion, Vic Firth sticks & mallets, Zildjian cymbals, and Black Swamp accessories, he has performed and given masterclasses and clinics throughout the United States and across three continents. Nathan has recorded two solo marimba albums to date – "Spiral Passages" and "The Yuletide Marimba" – as well as several chamber music albums, including a recent collaboration with euphoniumist Brian Meixner titled "Praxis."

With over 60 publications for percussion ensemble, concert band, orchestra, chamber ensembles, and soloists as well as an ever-growing number of commissions, Nathan balances his performing with composing, and to great acclaim. He is the only composer in the history of the Percussive Arts Society International Composition Contest to procure both 2nd and 3rd place in the same year with his percussion ensemble works "Limerick Daydreams" and "Adaptation," respectively. Nathan's compositions appear regularly on performances at PASIC, the Midwest Band and Orchestra Clinic, the Bands of America National Percussion Festival, and in concert halls and other performance venues around the world. His works have also been recorded on several albums by respected performers, including the FSU Percussion Ensemble, the Showa Wind Symphony conducted by Ray Cramer, the RoseWind Duo, and Mississippi State University. Additionally, three of his compositions for wind ensemble have been featured in three volumes of "Teaching Music Through Performance in Band."

As an educator, Nathan served as a Visiting Lecturer of Percussion for three years at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, where he taught applied percussion and conducted the Percussion Ensemble. He also served as a sabbatical replacement at the University of Oklahoma, where he taught undergraduate and graduate percussion students and conducted the world-renowned OU Percussion Orchestra. Dr. Daughtrey is currently a Visiting Lecturer of Percussion and Music Composition at High Point University (NC), where he teaches applied lessons, directs the percussion ensemble and works in collaboration with the School of Communication and Department of Dance.

Nathan remains active within the Percussive Arts Society serving as a member of the Composition Contest Committee, organizing the PASIC Fun Runs on behalf of the Health and Wellness Committee, and editing the keyboard percussion articles for Percussive Notes.

The Cry: An Andalusian Fantasy

Nathan Daughtrey

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