MUSIC FOR KEYBOARD PERCUSSIONS • McCormick Perc Group • RAVELLO RR 7804 (65:12)

LEE Quartet for Mallets. SANDSTROM Pieces of Wood. MILLER Basho Songs. ADAMS Diffusion One. SMITH Apart. TIMPSON Marimbatures

Music for Keyboard Percussions
Audio CD
Ravello
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Before I get started, I have a few complaints about program notes to get off my chest. The following are generalizations (but particularly pertinent to this recording), so if you’re not guilty, please disregard the gripes. First, a plea to all CD producers: Spare us the tome of bios and elegiac descriptions of the pieces. Second, if the type were bigger than microfiche size, I might be able to read the notes, which are often interesting, if infinitesimal. Third, does anyone proofread anymore? On this new CD by—excuse me, I have to fire up my electron microscope to read the cover—Ravello Records, the name of the composer of several cuts is misstated as John-Michael Simpson instead of Michael Sidney Timpson. It’s not even close. I couldn’t find a John-Michael anywhere. Also, the members of the McCormick Percussion Group are listed but not the instruments they play. And by the way, there’s no total recording time to be found, either.

OK, I feel better now.

As for the CD itself, for those of you who wait breathlessly for new percussion music, and I’m sure there’re at least three of you out there (and all percussionists), this CD faithfully demonstrates what percussionists do, which is to say, when they’re not relegated to, I’m sure at times, dull orchestral parts (imagine doing Bolero every night for a weekend), they’re looking for novel ways to explore the outermost boundaries of their instruments. I must also say that I have known a few percussionists and they are all consummate musicians. After all, they have to be one-man bands, isolated behind the orchestra, racing back and forth between kettledrums and glockenspiels, desperately lunging to grab the cymbals before the big finale of the 1812 Overture or Jennifer Higdon’s Concerto for Orchestra . The McCormick Percussion Group proves no exception to the skills and virtuosity of this ilk of instrumentalists, and its CD, Music for Keyboard Percussions , gives the talented marimbaists and vibraphonists ample opportunities to display their multitude of abilities in their interpretations of the challenging works of six composers.

Quartet for Mallets, for example, by Chihchun Chi-Sun Lee (b. 1970), is scored for vibraphone and three marimbas. Lee tells us: “I use the most simple concepts and motives to create this piece by exploring the different possibilities of motivic development and highlight the timbrel contrasts between vibraphone and marimba.” The resulting music is atmospheric, meditative, spatial, with a variety of unique sounds and rhythms.

David Sandstrom (b. 1942) gives us Pieces of Wood employing two xylophones, two marimbas, log drums, wood blocks, temple block, and wooden chimes. He explores complex rhythms that reminded me of primitive forest sounds with some underwater sounds and crescendos of soft bubbly aquarium murmurs. There are interesting dynamics, too; you don’t get to hear pp percussion often in an orchestra. Some frenetic slapping sounds announce a climaxing, complex presentation of rhythms racing to the end.

For more diversity, there is Basho Songs, by Edward Jay Miller (b. 1930), for soprano, bells, vibraphone, xylophone, maracas, temple blocks, suspended cymbals and gong. The fluidity of the soprano contrasts nicely with the brittle rhythms of the instruments.

In Diffusion One, Daniel Adams (b. 1956) explains he has constructed the piece around “five distinct episodes in which three of five marimbas play, collectively, 11 of the 12 notes of the chromatic scale. Each episode is based on a different one-octave cluster within the five-octave range of the two low-C marimbas. The diffusion process begins toward the end of each episode as the two remaining marimbas enter with a rhythmic pattern based on the note omitted from the episode.” The chemical principal of diffusion, in which particles move from an area of lesser concentration to one of greater concentration, is the metaphor here and an intriguing one. But I don’t believe the average listener will be able to make sense out of this mixture of table of elements and tones without a simultaneous broadcast of music theory for the harmonically impaired.

Stuart Saunders Smith, in Apart , for vibraphone and two glockenspiels, emphasizes the distance between humans who, however intimate, are estranged in the end by forces beyond their control. There are some music-box sounds when we enter a crystal palace of fragile music performed in different worlds of rhythm and sometimes pitch by the two performers. However, the piece is way too long to sustain my interest in the concept.

Finally, there is the cutely titled Marimbatures, scored for four marimbas. The composer tells us this series of short pieces is an “exploration of the multitude of timbrel, textual, gestural, and harmonic possibilities of marimba.” There is interesting stick work and a display of eccentric sounds occasionally seeming to imitate radiator pipes clanging. There are glissandos and performers chanting the occasional “chica boom,” which seemed somewhat arbitrary, if amusing. But the overall effect is exciting and attention-getting, achieving the goal of demonstrating the flexibility of marimba and its ability to hold its own without orchestral backup. David Wolman