Product Description
Watch a video of this piece here: https://youtu.be/vObn4aeUQBM
Before writing this piece, I spent time listening to several well-known
works of the marimba repertoire. I was fascinated by the possibilities
of this colorful instrument, by the variety of beautiful sounds and
patterns that it could produce. However, I felt that the sound world I
wanted to create for my piece was different from the ones I was hearing
in those works.
As I set out to look for a more personal
approach, I remembered a short musical idea that had come to my mind a
year earlier, while I was at home in the company of my one-year-old
daughter. This seminal idea was very simple, and had several qualities
that were reminiscent of Andean folk music. I decided to pick up that
unused fragment and started to play around with it, experimenting with
subtle changes of rhythm and harmony to see what colors would result.
I
started to discover some combinations of chords that I found very
beautiful. All of those combinations had something in common: though the
harmonies were constantly shifting, the music appeared to stay static,
in one place. It didnt seem to be trying to "go" anywhere, or trying to
"progress" towards any specific place. And yet, it was rich in color
and expression, just where it was. It seemed to contain a hidden
melancholy, something like an underlying and subtle sadness beneath a
more elegant and restrained surface.
As I continued to work on
this music at the piano, I found myself feeling increasingly drawn to
its special character, and developed a particularly intimate
relationship to it. I didnt yet know how it would turn into a larger
piece. But through a process that is still a bit mysterious to me, and
that involved much further experimentation, that initial little idea
eventually crystallized its way into becoming a finished larger work.
I think of this piece as being an imagined folksong.
It is my gift to all marimba players, and their audiences, worldwide.
This product was created by a member of ArrangeMe, Hal Leonard's global self-publishing community of independent composers, arrangers, and songwriters. ArrangeMe allows for the publication of unique arrangements of both popular titles and original compositions from a wide variety of voices and backgrounds.