Concertpiece "House"

for Piano or Marimba

Composed: 1999, rev. 2002
Duration: 9'

Program Notes

I began composing this piece in 1997 for marimbist Michael Overman. The piece has a rather varied history and has seen several incarnations. It started with a request by Mr. Overman for a piece for solo marimba. As the title is often the starting point for my music, I tried to have fun with this piece by asking two different people for one word each. I asked the first for her favorite adjective. She said “macabre.” I asked the second for her least favorite noun. The answer came back “doily.” Putting the two together, the piece became Macabre Doily. While the opening flurries of notes reminded me of lace, the piece quickly grew away from the title, leading me to title it Concertpiece (“He Shouts, He Stomps”). This title was a reference to a work by a friend of mine titled She Sings, She Screams, and also reflected the fact that the piece, in that incarnation, called for the marimbist to stomp and shout as well as play the marimba. Eventually, I did away with the extraneous noises and concentrated on the marimba part. I retained the Concertpiece part of the title, as the work is intended to be a concertpiece, and added the word “house”to refer to the fact that the piece bears the influence of house music. The fusion of popular idioms with “classical” music is a field of great interest to me. That version of the work was completed in 1999. Since then, I decided to rework the piece for piano, resulting in this latest version, which was premiered by Winston Choi at Northwestern University in May, 2002.

Score and Recording

Click the PDF icon below for a viewable score in PDF format. For a printable score and other performance materials, including the necessary software, please contact me.