IM NOT PLAYING

BIRD TAPE! BIRD TAPE! BIRD TAPE! BIRD TAPE! 

BIRD

LARRY BIRD

DAVE BIRD

BIRD $CAM

BIRD TAPER FADE

CHICKEN BURGER

BIRD DRONE

Bossa Breakcore In Pb Dorian


Half-Time captures the thoughts and feelings of a basketball team at the halftime, rather than any actual playing. It is more about reminiscences, hopes, frustrations, and the numerous other feelings that most likely flood players at intermission, when the game is not over yet.

It is in five short sections (there are five players on a team), with the “bouncing ball” note A (also in a rhythm of five) appearing in most of them. The phrasing in the first section makes uses of rhythms derived from famous Celtic player jersey numbers (33 [3+3] for Larry Bird, 34 [3+4] for Paul Pierce etc.). This is followed by a section featuring a “wedge” motive, then a slow middle section featuring a dialogue between a cantabile espressivo melody and sottovoce harmonics, followed by a fast rhythmic scherzando section, and a concluding driving groove with a short coda.

While embedding jersey numbers in the opening section was a conscious choice, the rest of the piece was mainly the result of an unconscious process. I had heard Andy Wen’s beautiful saxophone playing at a conference and we discovered our mutual love for basketball.
I marveled at the fact that, though from San Antonio, he was a devoted Celtics fan (I call Boston home). I wrote the piece for him and initially called it Sonatina, until it dawned on me that what I had written had to do really with the game’s half-time. It is a musical intermezzo, so it can be played as an independent piece, between other pieces, and can even be repeated in the course of the same recital program.

This is a live recording of Andy Wen playing at Messiah College in Harrisburg, PA on Nov 1, 2023

© Michele Caniato 2023

Half-Time

Inventors of Digital Dungeoncore. A collective. An idea.

Composer Michele Caniato writes chamber, orchestral, vocal, piano, and jazz music. His works have been performed nationally and internationally, including in the USA, Canada, Italy, Finland, and on Italian National Radio.

He was the winner of the 2019 Orchestra Composition Contest at the 53rd Contemporary Music Festival at Indiana State University, a finalist in the BMI Foundation/Charlie Parker Composition Competition in New York, and semi-finalist for the American Prize, and has received Fulbright, Massachusetts Cultural Council, and Jasper Whiting Foundation grants, and residencies at Brush Creek Foundation for the Arts (WY), and Escape to Create (FL).

Michele received a doctoral degree in composition from Boston University where he studied with Lukas Foss, and trained also at the New England Conservatory and Berklee College of Music. He has been a longtime member of the faculty at Fitchburg State University. Caniato is an ASCAP member and his music is distributed by Subito Music.

New tracks tagged #larry bird