The title 5 for 3 refers not only to the fact that this is a set of five short pieces for three performers, but also to the compositional application of the numbers five, four, and three throughout the piece. These numbers refer to musical elements such as intervals, rhythmic groupings, and durational ratios. Each movement is about one minute long. The first is an exploration of intervallic permutations and features capricious interplay between the instruments. The second highlights the vibraphone against soft textures in the wind instruments. The third brings the element of cool swing that is home territory for the vibes and clarinet. The fourth brings the horn to the fore in close counterpoint with the clarinet. The fifth treats the three instruments as a unified ensemble playing notes explicitly grouped in sets of three, four, and five.

Timothy Thompson is a composer and music educator. As professor of music at Palm Beach Atlantic University, he oversees the areas of music theory, composition, and technology, and directs the biennial Frontwave New Music Festival. He received degrees in music composition from Samford University and Florida State University, where he studied composition with John Boda and Ladislav Kubik.

'5 for 3' for clarinet, horn & vibraphone by Timothy Thompson (April 30, 2017)

'Rhapsody' for horn and piano. My primary instrument is the piano, but in high school and college I also played the horn. I’ve always loved the instrument, and I wrote this sonata in 1997 as my way of honoring the instrument and friends of mine who played it well. A year or so ago, I unearthed the piece and began rewriting it extensively. The second movement features a slow main theme and a rhapsodic contrasting section that is based on a four-note motif that weaves in and out of fast and slow episodes. It ends with a return to the opening material and a short cadenza by the solo horn.

Greg Stepanich studied music theory and composition at Boston University, and while there, wrote music for and conducted two original musicals for the Harvard Law School. He studied history at the University of Illinois, and has worked as a newspaper reporter and editor in Illinois, West Virginia and Florida. He founded Palm Beach ArtsPaper in 2008 and is a co- founder of Zimmermann’s Café Chamber Music.

'Rhapsody' for horn and piano by Gregory Stepanich

The 'Scherzi Musicali' for cello and piano is an early work, written when I was living in New York. It is dedicated to my cousin Peter Rosenfeld, a very fine cellist. The two of us gave the première in a contemporary music program at Town Hall. I borrowed the name of the composition from Claudio Monteverdi’s Scherzi Musicali, which are sets of secular songs that Monteverdi called “musical jokes”, a description that stuck to the form, as in music texts a scherzo is often described as an instrumental piece that tells a musical joke. We know that isn’t always true. Certainly, the orchestral scherzos of Beethoven or the piano scherzos of Chopin are not exactly of a joking nature. However, all scherzos have one common quality. They are fast pieces. My scherzi musicali is a set of three fast pieces, each in a different style. The third of these is marked giocoso, which in Italian means happy or jocular; and so, it is true to form. The movement consists of two contrasting blocks of music. The first of these is a snappy theme that is treated as a short fugato. The second theme is a lyrical one accompanied by a fast syncopated bass. The two themes alternate with one another throughout the movement, and then near the end of the piece they are combined. But they don’t really fit together as a harmonious whole. The two themes are jammed together in a kind of musical contest. In the final measures one of them emerges alone to have the last say.

Donald Waxman “occupies a unique position among American composers. A highly fluent and versatile composer of chamber, choral and symphonic music, he is also a prodigious composer of pedagogical piano music, of which, in my estimation, he is without a peer. He has written over fifty piano educational works, all of them in print, a body of works that has won him significant praise and admiration for originality and the subtle use of a contemporary harmonic and rhythmic language ... Educated at the Peabody Institute and the Juilliard School, he won early recognition for his creative talents. While still in his thirties he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship to Paris, and his career has since been marked by many awards and commissions and performances from choruses, chamber ensembles and orchestras throughout the country. The elements of song and dance are the core of all of his music, expressed in an engaging and fresh sounding tonal language ...” (Robert Silverman, former Editor, The Piano Quarterly)

'Scherzi Musicali' No. 3: Allegro giocoso for cello and piano by Donald Waxman

'Spalding’s Bounce' for tenor saxophone, cello and piano does not refer to the recoil of a rubber ball but rather to fabulous musician/composer Esperanza Spalding. There is no use of musical quotation or even stylistic emulation, just a title of homage and an appreciation of the broad stylistic unity her music communicates to me. It presents a modern culmination of adventurous idioms that transcends musical genres.
“. . . modern syntactical ease of expression with a sort of post-serialist horizontal naturalness . . . plenty of intrinsic brilliance and complexity. This is chamber music that stands out as eloquent and well crafted . . . DeSena is an original.“ - Gapplegate Classical-Modern Music review

Ferdinando DeSena teaches composition and electronic music at the New World School of the Arts in Miami. He served on the faculty of the University of Miami from 1992–2009, and was Director of the Electronic Music Studio. His music has been performed throughout the continental U.S., in Puerto Rico, Hawaii, Argentina, Italy, Ireland, and Scotland. Fred De Sena earned a B.A in Computer Music at Ithaca College, a Masters in Electronic Music and a D.M.A. in Composition at the University of Miami. His principal teachers were Dennis Kam, Peter Rothbart, and Don Wilson. Fred is a Parma Recording artist. His music has also been released by artists on Albany Records and American Modern.

'Spalding's Bounce' for tenor saxophone, cello, and piano by Ferdinando DeSena

'Angels from the Sand' for violin, vibraphone and horn. Guardian angel sounds a warning, but the dance has begun, with an air of innocence soon to darken, foreshadowing torturous subjugation. Confused and angry ones flail and curl. Ephemeral serenity emerges predictably in mysterious sweetness. Guardian angel reappears, initiating rational discourse. Anxiety, seeping in, trumps reason; inevitable enmeshment ensues, a near-lethal tangle of anxiety, terror, rage, destruction ... final titanic explosion dissects, propels into separate orbits. Missio complevit, angelus custos requiescit.

Clare Shore, the second woman to earn the DMA degree in Composition from The Juilliard School, has received critical acclaim,with reviewers from the NY Times, Boston Globe, Washington Post and others hailing her works as “provocative,” ”immensely dramatic” “unpretentious,” ”ingenious and evocative,” “intriguing,” ”romantic to the core.” Shore studied with Charles Eakin, David Diamond, Vincent Persichetti, Roger Sessions and Gunther Schuller. She has received numerous commissions, awards and grants and has served on the faculties of Fordham University, Manhattan School of Music, the University of Virginia, George Mason University and Palm Beach Atlantic University. She holds an exclusive publishing contract with E.C. Schirmer. Her works are recorded on CRS, Owl Recordings and Opus One, produced by Grammy Award-winning Elite Recordings. Clare is a co-founder of Zimmermann’s Café Chamber Music.

'Angels from the Sand' for violin, horn, and vibraphone by Clare Shore

Sonata for alto saxophone and piano III.

Sonata for alto saxophone and piano II.

Saxophonist Dannel Espinoza and pianist Sheng-Yuan Kuan perform Marshall Turkin's 'Sonata' for alto saxophone and piano at Zimmermann's Café Chamber Music's October 27, 2019, event in Lake Worth, FL. The work, written in 1958, was dedicated to Sigurd Rascher, who edited the saxophone part for publication by Theodore Presser in 1969.

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