Howard Who?

The marimba is among my favorite instruments of all time. It resonates deeply generating the all important overtones that wash over your ears. They don’t sound dinky like xylophones can or too mellow like vibraphones can. They are just right in their rich tones of wood that can both feel ancient as well as modern.

Steve Reich deftly combines those elements in his piece Six Marimbas. Originally written for six pianos, I actually prefer the marimba version for the reasons stated above. As much as I love the piano, marimbas fill the piece up using a larger sonic spectrum. While six pianos sound to me like mushy overkill, six marimbas blend together like a pack of zebras.

The UCLA Percussion Ensemble performed this on Monday at Schoenberg Hall. Don’t bother looking it up on the Steve Reich website because he doesn’t list it. Too bad for him because it was a free concert and featured an enjoyable mix of composers varying from Telemann to Christopher Rouse to grad music student Joseph Trapanese, whose piece rocked in a cool action music way. The crowd was populated by students, many of whom were classical/percussion novices. But when Reich’s piece was over there was a hush of “Wow that was cool.” Yes, it was.

Six Marimbas - Steve Reich, performed by UCLA Percussion Ensemble 4/30/2007

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 2nd, 2007 at 3:52 am and is filed under Uncategorized, Classical Music, Minimalism, Howard Who?. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.