The UW Percussion Ensemble (Bonnie Whiting, director) performs music by Caroline Shaw, Elena Rykova, and Qu Xiao-Song, plus open scores by Pauline Oliveros, George Lewis, and Stacey Bowers. Also featured: first-year undergraduates in ragtime arrangements for xylophone and marimba.
Program
University of Washington Percussion Ensemble
Thursday, May 23rd, 7:30 pm, Meany Studio Theatre
Bonnie Whiting, director
Pattern Study no. 2 (1976): Stacey Bowers
Subito Dodo (2017): Elena Rykova
The Well and The Gentle (1983): Pauline Oliveros
Drums of Xi (1991): QU Xiao-Song
-PAUSE (5 min)-
Hemispherectomy (2024): Melissa Wang/Abigail George
Artificial Life 2007, Page 1 (2007): George Lewis
Taxidermy (2012)-: Caroline Shaw
Ragtime Suite (arr. Bob Becker, 1990): George Hamilton Green
Log Cabin Blues (1924): Cyan Duong, xylophone
Rainbow Ripples (1926): Luigi Salvaggio, xylophone
The Whistler (1924): Ivy Moore, xylophone
Triplets (1924): Momoka Fukushima, xylophone
The UW Percussion Ensemble
Ryan Baker, Cyan Duong, Scott Farkas, Momoka Fukushima, Abigail George, Simon Harty, Gabriel Kennedy-Gibbens, Taryn Marks, Rose Martin, Ivy Moore, Grace Rosing, Luigi Salvaggio, Gracia Wang, Melissa Wang, Nat Yamamoto
Acknowledgements
Many thanks to: Rose Martin (our graduate student coach and TA), Kaisho Barnhill (our student worker), the Meany Center staff, the UW School of Music staff, and our Director Joël-François Durand
The University of Washington acknowledges the Coast Salish peoples of this land, the land which touches the shared waters of all tribes and bands within the Suquamish, Tulalip and Muckleshoot nations.
Program Notes
PATTERN STUDY #2 by Stacey Bowers, dedicated to the Blackearth Percussion Group, was written in 1976. Twenty-four patterns are repeated and improvised over a seven-note bass line that is repeated throughout. These patterns can be played in any order, repeated as often as desired, and used as a basis for improvisation. The work can be played by any pitched instruments and often incorporates drums or other rhythm instruments to sustain a pulse. The form emerges from the resultant improvisation.
Elena Rykova wrote SUBITO DODO (2017) for 5 players and prepared table. She writes:
It appeared out of the blue on my street. I was surprised to the extent that I didn’t think to take a photo or video of this bird. The next time we met, on the same street, it was running purposefully as if hunting. I tried to chase it, but he was much quicker than me. Both times, there was no one else around; not even a car- just him and me. The bird was bigger than a duck or any other American bird that may normally roam the streets of Cambridge. I like to think of that bird as a Dodo. This occasion caused me to consider the way in which my imagination affects my perception of reality, blending my thinking with daydreaming, which has made this kind of piece appear. Out of the blue. In my head.
THE WELL AND THE GENTLE (1983), was commissioned by the Relache new music ensemble and is one of the more popular of Oliveros' text-based intuitive pieces. Musicians are given a different scale for each of the two sections with one rhythmic motif for the second section and instructions for musical interaction.
QU Xiao-Song’s DRUMS OF XI was composed for Percussion Group Cincinnati, and is an excerpt of the composer’s larger percussion sextet, Xi. Earlier this month, the group was lucky to have a coaching with percussionist Allen Otte, founding member of PGC.
HEMISPHERECTOMY, co-composed by Abigail George and Melissa Wang for drum set and marimba, explores striking combinations of techniques, such as resonator play on the marimba and rattling chains on drum heads.
Without a notated score, George Lewis’s ARTIFICIAL LIFE (2007) instead comprises a set of instructions for a flexible group of instruments, guiding them through a complex and highly structured, yet in many ways open-ended improvisation: no conductor is required, and many dimensions of the performance, including duration and instrumentation, are up to the performers. Commissioned for the Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra by the Scottish Arts Council, the work may be performed by musicians with any or no experience with musical improvisation.
Why “TAXIDERMY”? I just find the word strangely compelling, and it evokes something grand, awkward, epic, silent, funny, and just a bit creepy — all characteristics of this piece, in a way. The repeated phrase toward the end (“the detail of the pattern is movement”) is a little concept I love trying (and failing) to imagine. It comes from T.S. Eliot’s beautiful and perplexing Burnt Norton (from the Four Quartets), and I’ve used it before in other work — as a kind of whimsical existentialist mantra. –Caroline Shaw
In the mid-1920’s virtuoso xylophone soloist George Hamilton Green created intricate, blisteringly fast “novelty” rags for percussionists to play. A century later, we’re using a set of these pieces (arranged by Bob Becker in the 1990’s) to feature our fantastic first-year percussion students in a rousing concert closer.