Lovely tone! Very complex rhythm to keep all those mallets going! Really enjoyable.

Written: 1988-90
Duration: 3'
Instrumentation: solo 4 1/3 octave marimba (six mallets)
Recording: Gillian Maitland
World Premiere: Composer’s Forum, Eastman School of Music, Kilbourn Hall, Rochester, NY, May 27, 1990
Publisher: Bill Holab Music: http://www.billholabmusic.com/store/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=103_137&products_id=1343
For more information: https://robertpaterson.com/merry-go-round

PROGRAM NOTE
PROGRAM NOTE
Merry Go Round is the first of four projected pieces based on themes relating to children’s experiences. It starts out sounding like the music played on a merry go round at a fair but becomes dizzy toward the end. My inspiration for this piece occurred one day when I was with a girlfriend. I was standing in front of my marimba, fooling around and showing off. To impress her, I grabbed three mallets in each hand and clumsily proceeded to play a simple “oompah-pah” pattern with my left hand while playing a melody with my right. It was the first time I had ever tried to play with six mallets at once, and it all started out as an accident. I was inspired, so I developed that pattern into this playful piece, the first one I ever wrote for marimba played with six mallets.

Ploconan

Merry Go Round (Solo Six-Mallet Marimba)

American composer Robert Paterson is a true New Yorker—born and bred in Buffalo, he lived in Rochester and Ithaca for over ten years, in New York City for over twenty years, and now lives in Saratoga Springs, near the Adirondacks. Paterson’s colorful music embraces a wide variety of themes, everything from goddesses and online dating to mathematics and the environment. His music is filled with emotion and fierce rhythmic energy, marked by elegance, wit, and meticulous craftsmanship. Named Composer of The Year by the Classical Recording Foundation at Carnegie Hall, Paterson is the winner of the Alfred I. DuPont Award, and his opera Three Way won the Grammy® under Best Classical Producer of the Year. His music is often a Best of the Year pick on National Public Radio. His orchestral tone poem, Dark Mountains, regularly airs on NPR’s Performance Today. Three Way premiered with Nashville Opera, then BAM (Brooklyn Academy of Music), and across the United States. Minnesota Orchestra, Louisville Orchestra, The Oratorio Society of New York, Buffalo Philharmonic, Albany Pro Musica, Albany Symphony, Musica Sacra, Austin Symphony, Vermont Symphony, and ensembles worldwide perform his works. Paterson gives masterclasses at the Curtis Institute of Music, New York University, the Aspen Music Festival, the Cleveland Institute of Music, and more. He is the Artistic Director and house composer for Mostly Modern Projects. Robert is a lifelong vegan and advocates for animals and the environment, celebrating the natural world with ground-breaking works such as his Triple Concerto, A New Eaarth, Listen, and I Go Among Trees.

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