Kreiger: Trio In Summer for Duo for Marimba (5 oct, 41/3)

Score & CD of Electronic Portions

A chance encounter with Double Play’s beautiful new five-octave, cello ‘C’ marimba ultimately led to the creation of Trio in Summer. The instrument’s dark, haunting lowest octave offered a compelling extension of the percussive palette. Musical gestures soon coalesced featuring its husky, wooden bass voice in combination with the more familiar, 4½ octave marimba, and with an imagined electronic landscape. Composed especially for Double Play, the percussion team of Dominic Donato and Stephen Paysen, Trio in Summer celebrates the technical brilliance and musical nuance of these gifted performers. The electronic portion was realized at the Cummings Electronic and Digital Sound Studio of Connecticut College in New London, Connecticut. Much of the creative work was completed during the summer of 2004 when the composer happened to be reading Barbara Pym’s novel, Quartet in Autumn. Pym’s book wryly tells of four aging office colleagues facing retirement and probable solitude, each avoiding the possibility of deeper emotional connections. The individual players of Trio in Summer stubbornly seek connections, from chance encounters to casual completion of each other’s musical thought to the composition’s climax where three voices defiantly speak as one. –Arthur Kreiger

Instrumentation: Duo for Marimba (5 oct, 41/3)
Duration: 8′
Composed: 2005
Published by: Calabrese Brothers Music