Program Notes:
My doctoral research includes the construction of a body movement in order to avoid injuries by marimba playing, to expend the marimba repertory by arranging existing music, by commissioning new music and by composing own works. The spring recital will present to you new works for solo or chamber music and the music of Bach on the marimba.
The Prelude of Suite No. 2 consists of two parts, the first of which has a strong recurring theme that is immediately introduced in the beginning. The second part is a scale-based cadenza movement that leads to the final. The subsequent Allemande contains short cadenzas that stray away from this otherwise very strict dance form. Sarabande sounds richer than it is, mixing melody with broken chord to suggest a strong harmonic support. The first Menuette contains demanding chord shifting. The powerful Gigue is probably the most challenging movement. It requires a fluent melodic line on the right hand; the left hand gives the pulse. When both hand meet together will have to bring a light and dance feeling in order to keep a good balance.
After I have written “Café without sugar” the second movement of the work Kaleidoscope, I started to write The cappuccino lovely. I wanted to compose another piece for marimba solo with three movements with three different styles. In the first movement I want to have a jazz feeling to escape from a strict tempo and to bring the listeners an image like having a night walk in New York Street. Following movements have a minimalism structure: you will feel the relaxing sunshine at the beach in front of the Queensland Conservatorium in Brisbane and in the last movement I handled the French accordion music style which gives the impression walking around the Eiffel Tower in Paris. I grew up with American Starbucks coffee. Therefore, I reflected my preferred tastes like choco, milk and vanilla cream into the music with three different musical styles.
The ”Fusion 4 one” is commissioned by me and the Royal Conservatoire Antwerp. This piece is a mixture of many styles merged into one format. Here you will hear ethno, minimal rock, romantic, pop, jazz, atonal and even a little hip-hop. The 1st movement, “Ethno Prism” is basically built on a pentatonic scale with a touch of minimalist repletion, yet moves from a “rock” to a “romantic” style. The 2nd movement “Classic retro mix” is exactly this- classical looking back (12 tone row) mixed with a choral-like tonal theme. The 3rd movement “Game play” is just having a little bit of musical fun and the game is actually to fusion together the styles of fantasy, hip-hop, popular and jazz.
