If you like the idea of writing/listening to new music for world percussion, you should check out the Mid-Michigan percussion duo to hit. The duo reflect the globalized culture they live in, performing on instruments typical in western music (like the marimba) along with world percussion instruments such as tabla, mbira, kalimba, riq, and frame drum. They have some great resources on their website for composers interested in writing for those instruments, and are actively seeking new music and promoting new works.
And now for a shameless plug: they’ll be premiering second drift, for marimba and amplified mbira, in my composition recital next Thursday, April 21, 6 PM, at the RCAH Theatre in Snyder/Phillips. The challenges of writing for mbira (tuning, key layout) pushed me to approach the compositional process in different ways, which was a good thing. If you’re interested, I wrote a little more on that in my blog. I find the instrumental combination of marimba and mbira highly satisfying with a wide expressive range and many timbrel possibilities. I’m surprised there aren’t a lot of pieces out there for this combination. I asked a question about notation in rehearsal that went something like, “Is mbira typically notated like this?” They chuckled. Turns out mbira typically isn’t notated, in a Western sense. That’s exciting to me. That tells me there’s a lot of room to compose for instruments in ways that haven’t been done before, blending traditions and sounds to reflect who we are and where we live. World fusion bands have been doing that for a while now, even here in East Lansing.
Along those lines, I’ve been wondering if the demise of the orchestra — a popular topic of late – is due to the cultural disconnect between performers and audience. When the orchestra ceases to reflect who we are, do we cease to care to sustain it? If the orchestra acknowledged a more global culture (with sincere artistic expression, not as a gimmic), would they rediscover their audience? Nate Bliton recently demonstrated the success of invented world/folk music, and when the guy in the audience next to me admitted to really enjoying it even though he was “not musically trained,” I got even more interested. Some MSU composers are already working with ideas like this; off the top of my head I know Dave MacDonald recently wrote a concerto for steel pan and wind ensemble, and Alex Kreger has a band called Moyindau that explores “the relationship of Central Asian music to jazz, contemporary classical, rock and improvised music.” MSU also has a really fun salsa band that appeared recently on Jon Weber’s recital, and students showed up to my lab the next day still excited and talking about how great it was. Maybe it’s stuff like this that can help bring back energy to the orchestra scene.
