Program Notes

Cody Holmes - Palpitations (2021)

Cody Holmes is an American percussionist and composer who graduated from Texas
Tech University with a music education degree. Cody, alongside his brother Benjamin, formed
the Holmes Percussion Duo in order to continue composing and performing together after
college. Both brothers have since written a variety of pieces for solo keyboard and percussion
ensemble but perhaps their most consistently popular works are their marimba duets.
Palpitations is a recent addition to Holmes’s catalog, and its unique and challenging style makes
it a worthy addition to the overall marimba duet repertoire.
The piece opens with both performers playing twisting, winding runs up and down the
marimbas with a tense, dramatic aura that hangs over the entire piece, an aura that is further
highlighted by the ever-changing pulse that refuses to stay consistent for too long. The second
section relieves the tension somewhat with a triumphant melody backed by a more consistent,
grooving bass line. The third section of the piece perhaps represents the title the best, with the
two players bouncing off of each other in a heartbeat-like rhythm. This continues with the
players having parts that are set one sixteenth note off of each other, leading to a wide echoing
effect. Overall the piece requires a lot of communication and synergy between the two
performers to maintain its tense and fragile style and complicated, interlocking rhythms.
Because of how much active communication is required between players to properly
perform this piece, I am very thankful to have Abigail Stephens joining me as the other half of
the duet. Abby and I have been performing together since my freshman year and have since
discovered that we share a lot of similarities when it comes to our playing styles, and how we
learn music, which has made this such a fun and rewarding process as I learned the piece
alongside her.
Takatsugu Muramatsu - Land (2002)
Takatsugu Muramatsu is a Japanese pianist and composer, most well known for his
television and movie scores. His first jobs writing scores came while Muramatsu was getting his
degree in composition at the Kunitachi College of Music, and he has continued to have an
extensive career in the field since then, with his compositions being featured in films such as the
Studio Ghibli-produced “When Marnie Was There” and “Mary and the Witch's Flower.” While
Muramatsu is not a trained percussionist, he uses elements of his piano compositions and applies
them to marimba. He composed Land as a dedication to the marimbist Momoko Kamiya for the
Percussive Arts Society International Convention (PASIC) in 2004.
A calm, serene, and dramatic work, Land paints the image of a beautiful and pastoral
landscape for the listener. The piece instructs the performer to play with tempo rubato, which
allows them to be expressive and free with the tempo they choose to play. Because of the rubato
tempo and unspecified phrasing, how the piece sounds in a performance is largely left up to the
performer, allowing them a lot of creative liberty that is not always granted in classical solo
marimba. There are a few distinct sections, each slightly different from each other, with a
consistent sense of motion and exploration that permeates the entire work. This piece also sounds
unique among the rest of marimba solo literature because its composer is a pianist, and many of
its passages sound like they could easily belong on piano or marimba.
I was introduced to this piece back in high school, and it stands out to me as one of the
earliest percussion pieces I heard that I had a strong emotional response to. I have considered it
one of my favorite marimba solos for a while now, and having been enamored with it for so long,
it was the first piece I decided to put on this recital when it was initially being planned. Because
of how much choice the performer has going into the performance of this piece, I have found it
very personally and creatively fulfilling to learn and interpret it my own way, and create my own
unique version of what has become a classic of solo marimba literature.
Nigel Westlake - Omphalo Centric Lecture (1984)

Paul Klee - “Omphalo Centric Lecture” (1939)

Nigel Westlake is an Australian multi-instrumentalist and composer, who was inspired to

pursue music early on by his parents, both of whom were accomplished musicians that
performed with Sydney Symphony Orchestra. Westlake ended up traveling around the world,
playing in various types of ensembles such as fusion bands, ballet companies, circuses, and
orchestras. This wealth of performing experience led to Westlake having a large amount of
inspiration to draw from for his compositions. Omphalo Centric Lecture is a great example of
this wide range of inspiration, as it is mainly inspired by the conventions of west african music,
specifically that of the balafon, a type of xylophone that uses gourds as resonators. The title of
the piece comes from the painting of the same name by the German Expressionist artist Paul
Klee. Westlake has said that the “direct and centered simplicity” of Klee’s painting is what first
inspired him to compose the piece.
The continuous ostinato rhythm and grooves held by the different marimba parts
throughout the piece help to evoke the feeling of rhythm and energy felt in African percussion
music. The instrumentation of the piece also helps to evoke this feeling, with the aforementioned
balafon being represented by the marimbas, as well as the shakers and log drum that appear later
in the piece adding to the texture. Much of the challenge that this piece poses for the performer
comes from its unconventional rhythms that seem to almost create repeating patterns but are
slightly different every time. All four players must be very aware of each other's parts and how
their own part fits in with the other three in order to successfully perform this piece.
Learning this piece has been an exciting challenge and one that has required a lot of time
and focus to perfect. I would like to thank my other ensemble members, Professor Smithiger,
Ryley Quayle, and Ethan Boulanger for their hard work and focus that each of them put into this
piece. All of them have continued to work very hard both at learning their own parts, and making
each of them fit with the full ensemble.

Charles DeLancy - The Love of L’Histoire (1973)

Charles DeLancy is an American composer and percussionist. He graduated from the
University of California- Los Angeles with his Bachelor’s degree in 1953 and his Master’s in
1958. DeLancy used Igor Stravinsky’s L’Histoire du Soldat (Tale of the Soldier) , a chamber
ensemble piece written in 1918 as inspiration for his 1973 multiple percussion solo, The Love of
L’Histoire. Stravinsky as a composer is significant in percussion history because he is seen as
one of the first to have each performer play multiple percussion instruments in his pieces. Soldat
is a perfect example of this, including multiple different drums, cymbals, triangle, and
tambourine all in one percussion part. Because of its importance in percussion concert literature,
DeLancy sought to create a piece in dedication to Stravinsky’s, with much of the same
percussion instrumentation as Stravinsky’s Soldat.
The Love of L’Histoire is written for a large multiple percussion setup, including toms,
cymbals, and bass drum (similar to Stravinsky's setup) as well as woodblocks, cowbell, and a
tambourine. In Stravinsky’s chamber ensemble, instrumentation included wind and string
instruments including clarinet, trumpet, trombone, and violin. DeLancy chose to take many of
the musical themes played by these instruments in Stravinsky's piece, and converted them to the
multiple percussion setup in a variety of creative ways. Since DeLancey's setup does not consist
of any melodic instruments, he used creative concepts to imitate the motives of the piece on
these non-tonal instruments. Many of the high melodies played by instruments such as clarinet
and violin are depicted on the woodblocks, which are laid out in a few different pitches. Many of
the more rhythmic factors of the piece such as the double bass are replicated by the flipped over
bass drum and the toms. The performer must become familiar with the motives as they appear in
Stravinsky’s piece in order to best replicate them in DeLancy’s version.
 Solo multiple percussion is not an area of our repertoire that I have been particularly
experienced in before now, so this piece has been a unique and new challenge to learn. I have
enjoyed finding the melodic content of Stravisnsky’s version and trying to find the best way to
evoke it in this setup, and learning how to perform with such a different setup of instruments
than I am used to.

Michael Taylor - Rhapsody for Vibraphone and Marimba (2012)

Michael Taylor is an American percussionist and composer who received his Bachelor's
degree in music performance from the University of North Florida and his Master’s at the
University of Minnesota- Duluth. He currently teaches percussion and music theory at the
University of North Florida. Michael composed Rhapsody for Vibraphone and Marimba in 2012
for the Quey Percussion Duo, a percussion group consisting of Gene Koshinski and Tim
Broscious, for their composition contest. Because this was the winning piece of the contest, it got
a wide release, and put Michael Taylor on performers radars as an exciting and up-and-coming
composer.
Rhapsody is inspired by a variety of different genres of music, Taylor cites classical,
tango, heavy metal, and funk as inspirations he took from when writing the piece. While he
highlights a variety of genres and styles, the main focus of the piece is to take all these different
styles and combine them together in an organic and natural sounding way, to make a large piece
built off of many small themes. This range of styles that the piece takes from leads to the
performers needing to use a variety of different techniques to evoke each genre. There are
sections that need to be played with the heaviness and crushing intensity of a metal guitarist, and
areas where a performer must be light but with a consistent sense of motion to evoke the feeling
of a classical Bach etude. All of these combining styles and techniques lead to a challenging final
product that keeps listeners and performers entertained and engaged.
I will be performing Rhapsody with my colleague and good friend Alex Hornsey. Alex
introduced me to this piece with the intent of putting it on his senior recital, and over the course
of learning it, we ended up loving it so much that we decided to use it on both of ours. Learning
this work has been a challenge for me and I am very thankful for Alex’s continued helpfulness,
patience, and passion that he has shown throughout this process.
About — Holmes Percussion
Works by Cody — Holmes Percussion

Biography - Takatsugu Muramatsu Official Site (muramatsu-t.net)

Paul Klee and The Mystic Center | PDF (scribd.com)

Omphalo Centric Lecture – Rimshot

Westlake-Omphalo Centric Lecture (SP)-4M/P | Steve Weiss Music

A Multifaceted Performance Model for the Multiple Percussion Performance Practice:

Performance Analysis of Select Works toward Developing a Graduate Curriculum (wvu.edu)

L'Histoire du soldat - Wikipedia

L'histoire du soldat, K029 (Stravinsky, Igor) - IMSLP: Free Sheet Music PDF Download

Bio | miketaylorpercussion