Recital now Recited
Well... I guess I'm done. I finally had my Master's Recital. I spent so much time preparing for it. I put in so much work, and the payoff was incredible. There's no such thing as a perfect performance, but all told, I think I had a great one.
I spent most of my time over the two years I was at Appalachian learning the same few pieces. I picked my multi-percussion and timpani solos my first semester, and worked on them off and on since then. I had been working on one of my marimba duets off and on since my last semester of undergrad. That's 2 1/2 years! I spent two semesters on my marimba and snare solos. Before I performed, I was a little disappointed, looking back, that I didn't learn a wider variety of pieces. But after listening to the recording of my recital... it's ok. Those pieces warranted the time I spent on them. And that's saying nothing of the half a semester I had to take off a year ago for an injury.
At at least one point in almost every piece I performed, I caught myself thinking, "Ugh, how much time is left on this piece?! I'm so tired of playing this! I just want it to be over!" I had to stop and remind myself that that's not the way to be thinking during a performance, for goodness' sake. But now that it's over, I don't have to practice those pieces anymore, I feel great. I'll play some of them again sometime. My repertoire needs a piece as beautiful as Ameline, and a piece as flashy and showy as Murakami's Empty Chair. But for the moment, I can take a break from them.
The most fun part of my recital was the only part that I included... well, just for fun. I played 6:00 by Dream Theater. I had been planning to play it since my second semester here, and I was so scared I would let it slip by without bothering to get a group together in time. But I did it, doggonit. Performing Dream Theater was kind of a dream of mine (weak pun unintended). And we did it.
I am so looking forward to learning some other music. I picked out a few marimba pieces with high-density wedding-grade smarm. Pieces that are just nice, pretty, and easy. I think I'll try to get into wedding gigging.
Or maybe I'll learn Merlin again. And Velocities. Who knows? The point is that now, I can play whatever the heck I want to.
If you want to learn more about what I played on the concert, here are the program notes!
Murakami’s Empty Chair is a multiple percussion solo written to pay homage to the great Japanese author, Haruki Murakami. At the time I was composing this, I was simply mystified by how Haruki Murakami could write such challenging literature that is so accessible to the common reader but still wonderfully strong in form and content – like an absurd mix of Kafka, Vonnegut and the $2.99 romance novels found in grocery store lines. I have never found such an intriguing balance of the logos/pathos dynamic as that which is found in Murakami’s work.
The title takes its name from a scene in the book, The Wind-up Bird Chronicle, in which a nightmarish chase sequence is happening through a mysterious luxury hotel. The main character is an almost offensively “normal” guy trying to find his wife, only to learn that she is part of this viscerally disturbing Murakami-world. He is petrified at every turn only to find himself locked in a room with plush carpet, low lighting, and one empty chair. After earlier pages of torture, humiliation, and the most confusing of all – fear, the image of an empty chair in a room is simply terrifying. It is shocking how an otherwise simple image has been mutated into an instrument of terror, with no earthly reason why a person should be scared of it.
Murakami’s Empty Chair is composed with a strong concern for form and actually employs the aesthetic principle of the golden mean and even a retrograde point of the golden mean. Additionally, the introduction is rooted entirely in fugual sentiment and the coda, for lack of a better word, is quite deliberately a recapitulation of subject material. Otherwise, Murakami’s Empty Chair is meant to evoke this cauldron of pathos that Murakami is disturbingly good at by weaving an ever more sophisticated stream of free material through the entire framework.
The use of stones, wood plates, and membraneaphones are meant to evoke the organic quality of Murakami’s visceral style couple against the galvanizing agent of the gong that, in my mind, evokes elements of the earth shifted into something otherworldly.
-excerpts from the composer’s notes
Octabones, by Adi Morag, is an intentional misspelling of the word “octatones,” in reference to the synthetic octatonic scale on which the piece is largely based. The scale is built, instead of using natural intervals of a major scale, with a regular half-step whole-step pattern. The piece won third place for ensemble composition in the Percussive Arts Society Composition Competition in 1999. It was premiered by the world class Israeli percussion duo Percadu, consisting of Morag and Tomer Yariv.
I am thrilled to be performing this piece once again with my good friend, Daniel Myers. He was my duo partner in my undergraduate years at Western Carolina University, and this was our favorite piece that we played together.
The Noble Snare was composed by Stuart Saunders Smith, but the idea for the collection of pieces came from his wife, Sylvia. When Stuart received a Noble and Cooley snare drum, Sylvia loved the sound of it so much, they was inspired to try to help “elevate” the snare drum to a true solo concert instrument. Stuart decided to name the collection The Noble Snare as an homage to the drum that inspired the project. The first volume was among the first music composed for solo snare as an actual composition, not just an etude or exercise.
The first solo in the book, also called The Noble Snare, is the only one in the volume contributed by Smith. It is through-composed in a sort of free jazz style, though there is a little bit of repeated thematic material. Like many other Smith pieces, it contains a large amount of metric modulations and rapidly changing metric subdivisions.
Ameline is a pensive, emotional piece, composed by Eric Sammut in a single, emotional day. Dedicated to his friend Cyril Cambon, it was the expression of the emotional reaction to the death of Cambon’s daughter. In Sammut’s own words, “This is the fastest piece I composed, because I had really to say something, to express something.” It begins in a minor key, with sequential modulations into several different minor keys. There are many times at which the ear expects the music to modulate into a major key, but goes into a minor key instead. To me, this feels like searching for hope, but finding only more anguish. The piece ends with a new manifestation of the original theme in a major key. The composers calls this a “transformation with joy,” an attempt to “introduce some hope at the end, you know? Because I need it. It’s human – you cannot stay on the poor things of life, you know, you have to survive.” I leave you, the listener, to find your own understanding of what the final measures mean, as I have.
I dedicate my performance today to my father, David Abernathy, in memory of his mother, my grandmother, Jackie Abernathy.
“As a young timpanist with a keen professional goal of promoting the validity of timpani as a legitimate solo vehicle, I was frustrated with the currently available published solo repertoire, and in particular, sought a repertoire that displayed musical lyricism that was not reluctant to challenge both hands and feet towards the instrument’s potential. It was then that I decided to compose my first ‘Studie.’ Studie I is actually the first in a series of constructions that hope to explore further the idiomatic qualities of the instrument - specifically its resonant quality and use of the pedal. The timbral spectrum is extended beyond the timpani to include bass drum, various cymbals, and wood blocks. They are included periodically in the work not because the timpani are incapable of sustaining musical interest on their own (I believe they are, in fact, quite capable of this), but because they seem to provide a natural progression to help emphasize or resolve a musical thought. As the piece contains many abrupt contrasts in dynamics, rhythm, and timbral color, one must perform it with a keen sensitivity to these contrasts, and to his/her own presence among the instruments.”
-notes from the composer
Udacrep Akubrad by Avner Dorman was commissioned by Percadu, who premiered the piece. It is scored for marimba duo, with each player also using one low tom and two darbukas. A darbuka is an Arabic goblet drum, most likely originating in Turkey. Dorman, who is Israeli, writes, “This piece draws its inspiration from the music of our region, extending the ‘Eastern’ boundaries as far as the Indian sub-continent. The main source materials in this piece are scales and the rhythms emanating from the traditional classical music of the peoples of the Mediterranean on the one hand, and on the other: a repetitive minimalism, prevailing also in the music tradition of the Middle East, but in this piece depending on a technique that has been developed during the last thirty years.”
6:00 was composed collectively by Dream Theater for their 1994 album Awake, with lyrics by then-keyboardist Kevin Moore. He originally stated that the lyrics were about a man stuck in a stressful situation beyond his control, but it was later reveal that the song, like many of his lyrical contributions to the album, were about his desire to leave the band (which he soon did). The audio samples used are from the 1987 film The Dead.
Those who know me well, especially during the last several years, are likely unsurprised to find a Dream Theater song on my recital. It has been a real blast to put together, and we’re all very excited to perform it.
Six o'clock the siren kicks him from a dream
Tries to shake it off but it just won't stop
Can't find the strength but he's got promises to keep
And wood to chop before he sleeps
I may never get over
But never's better than now
I've got bases to cover
He's in the parking lot and he's just sitting in his car
It's nine o'clock but he can't get out
He lights a cigarette
And turns the music down
But just can't seem to shake that sound
Once I thought I'd get over
But it's too late for me now
I've got bases to cover
Melody walks through the door
And memory flies out the window
And nobody knows what they want
'til they finally let it all go
The pain inside
Coming outside
So many ways to drown a man
So many ways to drag him down
Some are fast and some take years and years
Can't hear what he's saying when he's talking in his sleep
He finally found the sound but he's in too deep
I could never get over
Is it too late for me now?
Feel like blowing my cover
Melody walks through the door
And memory flies out the window
And nobody knows what they want
'til they finally let it all go
But don't cut your losses too soon
'cause you'll only be cutting your throat
And answer a call while you still hear at all
'cause nobody will if you won't
Thank you
to Daniel, Tyler, Rachel, James, John, and Greg for playing with me today; to friends and fellow musicians who have supported me; to Mario Gaetano, Rick Dilling, Byron Hedgepeth, and Rob Falvo, my college percussion professors (so far); to my fellow percussionists for inspiring me to become better every day; to my whole family for being all that they are to me; to my beagle Rey for being just the best thing ever; and most of all, to God, the perfect Artist, for letting us share His gift of music.
