BA DA BOOM PERCUSSION IN CONCERT Friday 13 October : Ian Hanger Recital Hall Brick by Brick (2023)
Caitlyn Hermann (b.)
Brick by Brick’, written for Percussion Quartet [Orchestral Bells, Xylophone, Vibraphone, and Marimba], explores the childhood journey of playing with Lego. The piece opens in unison and evolves by manipulating expanding intervals and altering rhythms to assemble a structure. This represents riffling through a bucket, pulling out pieces, and connecting them together. The chorale section signifies playing with the construction, embracing creative and imaginative play. Finally, the closing section manipulates the original themes in retrograde, to symbolise packing up and pulling the construction apart. Caitlyn Hermann
Free Radicals – finale (1996)
Michael Askill (b.1952)
In preparation for Sydney Dance Company’s production, Synergy with Synergy, the percussionists of Synergy provided Graeme Murphy with a number of pieces from the percussion repertoire for consideration, selected for their potential compatibility with dance and dancers. For myself and the other members of Synergy, the most complicated part of the process at the time, was negotiating through our different instrumental set-ups during the onstage performance. For Synergy with Synergy, we knew the music well before we came to rehearse with the dancers. Graeme was keen to approach Free Radicals quite differently. Significantly, there was to be no existing or pre-composed music and no large instrumental set-ups that would inhibit touring, always allowing for technical speed and efficiency in all kinds of theatres and even outdoor venues. So, on Day One of our rehearsal period – no choreography, NO MUSIC! My priority was to find a common rhythmic language for both dancers and musicians. Dance phrases are often counted from 1 to 8, while musicians use both even and uneven counting systems. This can be quite confusing in an environment based entirely on rhythm without obvious melody. After some simple clapping and counting exercises, we settled on a simple method of expanding and contracting numbers and rhythms. A basic rhythm of 3 was expanded to 4, then to 5. This combination of 3, 4 and 5 gave us a larger phrase of 12 beats. Different groups of dancers and each of the three musicians were allocated a different combination of the numbers: 5 4 3; 4 3 5; 3 5 4. These number systems (sometimes in canon, sometimes backwards, sometimes in layers) became the basis for much of the music of Free Radicals and the key for real interaction between dancers and musicians. Michael Askill (Composer & Music Director)
Steve Reich (b.1936) Six Marimbas (1986) Six Marimbas, composed in 1986, is a rescoring for marimbas of my earlier Six Pianos (1973). The idea to rescore came from my friend, the percussionist James Preiss, who has been a member of my ensemble since 1971 and contributed the hand and mallet alterations that are used in this score. The piece begins with three marimbas playing the same eight beat rhythmic pattern, but with different notes for each marimba. One of the other marimbas begins to gradually build up the exact pattern of one of the marimbas already playing by putting the notes of the fifth beat on the seventh beat, then putting the notes of the first beat on the third beat, and so on, reconstructing the same pattern with the same notes, but two beats out of phase. When this canonic relationship has been fully constructed, the two other marimbas double some of the many melodic patterns resulting from this four-marimba relationship. By gradually increasing their volume they bring these resulting patterns up to the surface of the music; then, by lowering the volume they slowly return them to the overall contrapuntal web, in which the listener can hear them continuing along with many others in the ongoing four marimba relationship. This process of rhythmic construction followed by doubling the resulting patterns is then continued in the three sections of the piece that are marked off by changes of mode and gradually higher position on the marimba, the first in D-flat major, the second in E-flat dorian, and the third in B-flat natural minor. Steve Reich
Ba Da Boom Performers: Ally Quin Jaymee Homeming Connor Dinneen Caitlyn Hermann Dara Williams Quinn Ramsey Matthew Conway Mikaela Thomsen Rebecca Lloyd-Jones