Sheet music available from Tapspace at https://www.tapspace.com.

Rush Hour Samba (Eric Rath)

Echoes and Refractions ........................................... Michele Caniato 
I	(west) 
II	(north) 
III	(east) 
IV	(south) 

Duration: 15:00 I: 2:30, II: 2:10, III: 5:00, IV: 5:20

Echoes and Refractions: 

Planets, stars, and weather have helped guide human and animal meanderings across the Earth for millennia. Advances in technology in the past century have expanded the means by which people find their way around. Human activities have also brought major upheaval to the climate. 
I explore here the myth-laden cardinal points beginning with the West and ending with the South (West, North, East, South). Each movement is a tribute to the beauty and awe of natural phenomena we humans have enjoyed, celebrated, and feared worldwide, since our beginnings. 

Given the current environmental crisis these natural events can no longer be taken for granted. Unexpected weather can come to us in atypical seasons, in unusual places. While certain age-old realities persist (the sun is still perceived by people on Earth as setting in the West), in our times cardinal directions may not be guiding a pilot, an astronaut, or a person with GPS. 
Each movement comes to a close with an echo that refracts fragments of its music, veiling what we just heard with uncertainty. 

The last movement “South” culminates in a festive celebration of rhythm and song, adding the vertical axis of earth and sky (that parallels our two-legged stance). It also ends with “echo music,” with the vibraphone leading us somewhere unexplored. It perhaps adds to the six directions traveled (West, North, East, South, Below, Above), one further path: the movement inwards.

© Michele Caniato

Echoes and Refractions for percussion quartet

"Simple Objects" was Inspired by this quote from percussionist Steven Schick: “Percussion instruments are, after all, simple objects: hit them and they will make a sound.” Centered on four featured batter/auxiliary parts that celebrate their melodic simplicity, the timpani & keyboard instruments color these melodies with pitch.

Simple Objects (Perc Ens 12) - Louis Raymond-Kolker

"Ice" is a duet for marimba and vibraphone with 2 auxiliary percussionists bound to put you in a "chill" mood. Heavily influenced by jazz, both the vibraphone and marimba have moments to shine with melodic features throughout while the other instruments accompany.

Ice (Percussion Quartet) - Nathan Hervey

“While It Lasts” is a metallic-forward percussion ensemble that explores one’s perception of time, beginning with atmospheric bowed vibraphones and gradually building in tempo, color, and intensity throughout. This piece offers great contrast on any concert program and is perfect for developing musical nuance within an intermediate ensemble.

While It Lasts (Perc Ens 9 + Piano) - Cameron Brown

Everything in its Right Place

Foxglove

Variations on Themes of Luigi Boccherini was composed for Wind Orchestra by Gregory Fritze. The duration is thirteen minutes, in two movements. It was arranged in 2025 from the five movement,  twenty-six minute piece Vadit Super Pozolum that was composed in 2016, also by Gregory Fritze.

Variatiions on Themes by Luigi Boccherini

Variations on Themes of Luigi Boccherini

With a title pertaining to dreams or a dreamlike state, "Oneiric" is a work for large percussion ensemble that begins sparsely and gradually builds in intensity into a bright & driving celebration before concluding with the introspection from the opening.

Oneiric (Perc Ens 13-16) - Chad Heiny

When composing DERAIL for my first original work, I wanted to find a way to represent the past and future of my love for music. In doing this, I decided to go with the "percussion train" idea that I was introduced to for playing Michael Story's arrangement of The Polar Express. The joy I felt turning into a train was immense, and I wanted to respect that idea. Another way to pay my respects is by a quotation of Where The Streets Have No Name by U2. These two ideas merge together in an exhilarating journey through the change in ideas, a fun explosive burst of percussive energy, and an exciting outlook for the future of my dreams. To everyone who has helped me along towards this point, thank you infinitely, and to pay my respects: one round trip on the Curtis Klinger express. All aboard!

DERAIL - For Percussion Ensemble

"Gum-Suckers March" is the final movements of Percy Grainger’s Suite for Orchestra In a Nutshell, an original work in which no folksongs are used. “Gum-suckers” is a nickname for Australians hailing from Grainger’s Australian home state of Victoria. The leaves of the ‘gum’ (Eucalyptus) trees are very refreshing to suck in the hot Australian summer weather.

The Gum-Suckers March (Sax & Percussion Ensembles) - Percy Grainger, arr. Chal Ragsdale

Eurodance (Classical Music reload)

A World in Us (Percussion Ensemble 14-16) - Nathan Daughtrey

Emerging Victoriously (Percussion Orchestra) - Chris Prather

Cyclus (Percussion Orchestra) - Austin Theriot

With the trumpet and percussion ensemble exchanging and combining in the presentation of rhythmic and melodic ideas, this is an exciting work that explores the timbres and textures that are available to the composer of percussion ensemble music.

Concertino for Trumpet & Percussion Orchestra - Philip Parker

Using traditional instruments, Harding emulates the unmistakable sound of a Japanese taiko ensemble. The majestic opening accelerates into the quick tempo (quarter=180) which remains to the end of the piece. Your audiences will be blown away by the shear power of this piece!

Taiko (Percussion Ensemble) - Scott R. Harding

The entire sound is in my hands. I write cyber poetry, produce, and compose every track ready for Immersive 3D. Every beat is crafted for spatial and next-gen headphones.
Intimate lyrics, total immersion, every track.

For 30 years I kept unfinished demos to myself, never letting them out. Now I finish what I start and release it the moment it’s alive.

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.

Hey everyone, I'm a youth composer! I love writing music for wind ensembles and for electronic ones as well, inspired by movie scores, contemporary wind pieces, frutiger aero, and just about everything!

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 #percussion ensemble