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American Deconstruction Solo Recital Touring Program

Joseph Gramley, Multi-percussionist

Program to be selected from the following:

Program Notes

My program entitled American Deconstruction, looks at American works for percussion written after 1969. I have chosen these works for their representation of a variety of genres and periods in contemporary American music. These pieces are also both musically and technically sophisticated and allow me to display the full range of instrumentation available to today’s multi-percussionist. Common amongst all the pieces is a fusion of the tradition of classical music with the structures, harmonies and rhythms of the music of the regions where many of the instruments originated. Unique to multi-percussion performance is that with multi-instrument configurations, no two performers will end up with the same sounds. Even if all the instruments are specified for a piece - and many times they are not - performers will, by the very nature of percussion instruments, produce different individual and composite sounds. For me, this is a great feature of being a multi-percussionist.

Ganda Yina (The Strong Man is Out)
KAKRABA LOBI
Born 1939 in Ghana

In Ghana, Kakraba Lobi is one of the only living virtuosi to have mastered the vast and difficult repertoire of the gyil (Ghanaian marimba) and to have gained international acclaim as a concert soloist. Lobi’s approach to composing and improvising has been studied by percussionists and ethnomusicologists from around the world. From 1962?87 Lobi was a full-time faculty member at the Institute of African Studies at the University of Ghana and is presently an advising member of the staff at the Institute. He has performed throughout North American, Europe, Asia and Africa and has given guest lectures at universities in Germany, Japan, Scandinavia and the US.

Ganda Yina is a lyric passacaglia built upon a melodic conversation that occurs between the tenor and bass voices of the marimba. The melody, played by the right hand, sings above this foundation.

1 + 1 (1969)
PHILIP GLASS
Born 1937 in Baltimore

Philip Glass began studying music at six and became serious about music when he took up the flute at eight. After his second year in high school, he attended the University of Chicago and majored in mathematics and philosophy. by the time he was 23, Glass had studied with Vincent Persichetti, Darius Milhaud and William Bergsma. He had rejected serialism and preferred such maverick composers as Harry Partch, Charles Ives, Moondog, Henry Cowell and Virgil Thomson, but he still had not found his own voice. Still searching, he moved to Paris and had two years of intensive study under Nadia Boulanger. In Paris he was hired by a filmmaker to transcribe the Indian music of Ravi Shankar. In the process, Glass discovered the techniques of Indian music an promptly renounced his previous music and began applying eastern techniques to his work.

By 1974, Glass had composed a large collection of new music, much of it for use by the theatre company Mabou Mines (co-founded by Glass) and most of it composed for his own performing group, The Philip Glass Ensemble. This period culminated in Music in 12 Parts, a four-hour summation of Glass’ new music and reached is apogee in 1976 with the Philip Glass/Robert Wilson opera Einstein on the Beach, the four and a half hour epic now seen as a landmark in 20th century music-theatre. Glass’ output since Einstein has ranged from opera to symphonic and chamber works, to music dance, theater and film.

1 + 1, composed in 1958, is one of Glass’ first published works and an interesting contribution to minimalism. The piece is realized by combining two rhythmic units in continuous, regular arithmetic progression. The artist determines the length of the piece.

Meditation Preludes (1977)
WILLIAM DUCKWORTH
Born 1943 in North Carolina

William Duckworth was educated at East Carolina University and the University of Illinois, where he studied composition with Ben Johnston. According to Kyle Gann, Duckworth, “gravitated toward the early music of Reich and Glass, but - not wanting to imitate a style so easily identifiable - enriched their motoric rhythms and simple melodic materials via study of the music of Olivier Messiaen, whose air of mysticism and inscrutable rhythmic structures became part and parcel of Duckworth’s own aesthetic.” Duckworth is a composer of over 100 works and is considered a founder of the post minimalist style. According to Gann, “starting with minimalism’s simple tonalities and steady eighth-note rhythms, the post minimalists threw away the simple repetitions and turned up the subtlety.”

Duckworth has been a member of the composition forum at Darmstadt and was a featured composer at the 1995 Ferrara Festival. He has held both an NEA Composer Fellowship and an NEA Collaborative Fellowship. He is currently a member of the faculty of Bucknell University.

Meditation Preludes, written in 1977, is an elegant study in proportion and sonority. The left hand plays an octave and a half of tuned Alpen-glocken form Switzerland while the right plays the concert marimba or vibraphone. The disparate keyboards begin apart in different keys. As the work progresses, they merge into the same key and in to the same melodic voice.

Cathedral can be found on the Web at . www.monroestreet.com/Cathedral

Danza del Fuego (1998)
JOHN LABARBERA

John La Barbera’s music is recorded on Shanachie Records, Lyrichord Discs, and his song “Canto di Hecate” sung by vocalist/percussionist Allessandra Belloni, is released on Rounder Records. Among his credentials are several film scores, most notably: Children of Fate, nominated for best Documentary Feature in the 1994 Academy Awards (and winner of the 1993 Sundance Festival) and La Festa, produced by NJTV and premiered on PBS. In the world of musical theater his opera Stabat Mater-Donna di Paradiso is performed annually at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine (NY). John most recently recorded with Judy Collins and Dorothy Papadakos, organist at The Cathedral of St. John The Divine, and often performs as soloist as well as with chamber groups traveling through Europe, South America and the US. He appears at many festivals including those of Sienna, Bratislava, Rome and Florence. John is Music Director/Co-founder (in 1979) with Alessandra Belloni of “I Giullari di Piazza, Inc.” This ensemble serves as Artists-in-residence at The Cathedral of St. John the Divine and Caramoor Center for Music and the Arts in Katonah, NY. Danza del Fuego was originally written for classical guitar and percussion and has been transcribed for marimba and percussion by Mr. Gramley. This work will soon by published on the Joseph Gramley Series available from Studio 4 Music.

The Anvil Chorus (1991)
DAVID LANG

David Lang was born in 1957 and has written extensively for percussion in chamber as well as solo contexts. In his most provocative music, melodies are accompanied by noise and subtle harmonies are pulled apart by pounding rhythms. In The Anvil Chorus the melodies suggest what one might hear walking past a blacksmiths workshop centuries ago, with four blacksmiths working simultaneously. In this piece, Lang allows the performer ample play in the choice of instruments. Only a pedal bass drum and two wood blocks are specified. Everything else, including the resonant and non-resonant metals that are struck (hammered as it were) by hand and with foot pedals, is left up to the discretion of the performer. I use a total of five foot pedals in this work. My instrument choices include: three Indonesian Gamelan gongs of different pitch; a pedal bass drum (specified); two muffled Chinese cymbals; a custom made steel bell from my home state of Oregon; a Chinese opera Jing Cymbal; two wood blocks (specified); and, four muffled Chinese opera gongs of different pitch. This work was written for Steven Schick, commissioned by the Fromm Foundation and premiered at the 1991 Bang on a Can Festival.

Scraping Song
DAVID LANG
Born 1957 in Los Angeles

David Lang holds degrees from Stanford University and the University of Iowa, receiving his doctorate from the Yale School of Music in 1989. His teachers have included Jacob Druckman, Hans Werner Henze and Martin Bresnick.

Mr. Lang is co-founder and co-artistic director of Bang on a Can, a New York-based organization dedicated to adventurous new music. He is also composer in residence at the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco. Lang's distinct sound fuses the tradition of classical music with urban aggressiveness, where melodies are accompanied by noise and subtle harmonies are pulled apart by pounding rhythms.

In this piece, Lang allows the performer ample play in the choice of instruments. Only a rock bass drum and the four guiros (bamboo scrapers) are specified. According to Lang’s instrumentation note: “The guiros must be long enough to create a real crescendo that can last for an entire measure, and at their loudest they should be capable of producing a sound that is scary.” In addition, the piece calls for four “junk metals” and four “bells or bell-like materials (that) should be pitched relatively high and should sound fragile, or even tender.” Everything else, including the resonant junk metals, is left up to the discretion of the performer. Mr. Gramley’s instrument choice includes four brake drums (junk metals) of differing pitch for the resonant metals; a pedal bass drum (specified); and four high ceramic flower pots (bell-like materials) of differing pitch, in addition to the specified scrapers and rock bass drum. This piece was written for Steven Schick in 1997 and revised in 2001 by Mr. Lang for this evening’s performance.

Nagoya Marimbas (1994)
STEVE REICH

Nagoya Marimbas is somewhat similar to my pieces from the 1960s and 70s in that there are repeating patterns played on both marimbas, one or more beats out of phase, creating a series of two-part unison canons. However, these patterns are more melodically developed, change frequently, and each is usually repeated no more than three times, similar to my more recent work. The piece is also considerably more difficult to play than my earlier ones and requires two virtuoso performers. The work was commissioned by the Conservatory in Nagoya, Japan, to mark the opening of their new Shirakawa Hall in 1994 © 1998 Steve Reich

Cold Pressed (1990)
DAVE HOLLINDEN
Born in 1958

Dave Hollinden has composed extensively for percussion. His works are widely performed by leading percussion ensembles in the US and overseas. In the words of critic John R. Raush, Hollinden's music “derives movement from the juxtaposition of placid, serene sections with sections that are marked, to use the composer's directions to the player, "restless," "animated-excited," "increasingly agitated" and "impassioned”. Dave Hollinden’s instrumentation for this multi-percussion work includes snare drum, two tom toms, bass drum with pedal, bongos, tambourine, three cowbells, two woodblocks, two temple blocks, two crotales, splash cymbal, crash cymbal and ride cymbal.

According to Hollinden, the term Cold Pressed refers to the method of extracting olive oil which results in the most robust and full-bodied flavor. Syncopation, contrasting timbres and rock-influenced style are blended together in music which is vivid, spicy and obsessively persistent. Cold Pressed was commissioned by Nachiko Maekane and was premiered in Tokyo in 1990. Three out of four finalists chose Cold Pressed for their program in the multiple percussion solo competition at the 1994 Percussive Arts Society International Convention.

Velocities
Joseph Schwantner

Of his 1990 commission 'Velocities' from the Percussive Arts Society, composer Joseph Schwantner writes: The music, as the title suggests, is characterized by continuously changing textures of rapidly articulated pitches within a framework of continually shifting meters. The linear, harmonic and gestural elements of the work are derived from four, five, six and seven-note pitch sets. The first major division ("relentlessly , with energy and intensity") opens with a series of aggressive articulations of a repeating harmonic idea followed by wave-like ostinato figures presented in 7/8 meter. The second principal section continues with persistent sixteenth-notes, and rhythmic ideas and gestures framed in triple meter. The last major section re-engages the primary musical elements presented and developed earlier, and leads to a forceful and spirited conclusion. © Joseph Schwantner

To The Earth
FREDERIC RZEWSKI
born Westfield, Massachusetts, 1938

Frederic Rzewski attended Harvard College and Princeton University where he studied philosophy, Greek and music. Among his teachers were Walter Piston, Roger Sessions and Milton Babbitt. Rzewski’s early friendship with Christian Wolff and David Behrman, and his acquaintance with John Cage and David Tudor, strongly influenced his development in both composition and performance. In Rome in the mid-sixties, together with Alvin Curran and Richard Teitelbaum, he formed the MEV (Musica Elettronica Viva) group, which quickly became known for its pioneering work in live electronics and improvisation.

Rzewski's compositions of the late sixties and early seventies combine elements derived equally from the worlds of written and improvised music. During the seventies he experimented further with forms in which style and language are treated as structural elements. Much of his work of the eighties explores new ways of using twelve-tone technique. A freer, more spontaneous approach to writing can be found in more recent work. Since 1977, he has been Professor of Composition at the Conservatoire Royal de Musique in Liege, Belgium.

To the Earth is a work that incorporates text and reflects the composer’s preoccupation with and commitment to social issues.

Black Jack (2000)
WILLIAM KENTON (Ken) BALES
Born 1952 in Missouri
Ken Bales attended the University of North Texas where he studied composition with William Latham and electronic and computer composition with Merrill Ellis and Larry Austin. He copmpleted his studies in 1980 upon receiving a Doctor of Musical Arts degree. Since 1982 Bales has been Coordinator of Theory and Composition and Professor of Music at the University of Nebraska, Omaha. His music is influenced by themes from the Western Classical tradition and from Native American music and the music and spirit of the Great Plains and the Ozarks, where he grew up.

Black Jack was inspired by Iannis Xenakis's Rebonds for solo percussion, Part A, which used a relatively small battery of unpitched percussion to produce a wide variety of color. It contrasts in two respects: it is written with a clearly recurring and regular metric structure; and, the performer’s voice is invoked as an integral part of the composition. The piece is based on the child ballad, Black-Jack Davy and tells the story of a handsome rogue who arrives in town, steals the heart of a local maiden and leaves as soon as his corruption is completed, much to the chagrin of the townspeople.