Cerulean Rhythms (2024)
PURCHASE SCORE
CERULEAN RHYTHMS
Concert Band // 10:00
Premiere: Thursday, April 11, 2024 @ 7:00pm, Main Theatre, Keene State College
Commissioned by the Theatre and Dance Department, Keene State College
Program Notes:
Cerulean Rhythms was commissioned by the Keene State College Department of Theater and Dance as a tribute to George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue on the occasion of it’s 100th anniversary. Gershwin wrote his iconic work as a crossover piece that intentionally brought popular jazz idioms into the concert hall setting. I decided to approach my work with similar intent, but to uncover what the incorporation of present-day popular musical idioms might look like, a century later. At the request of a choreographer involved in the project, I began with music from the genre of Electronic Dance Music, and specifically the music of a French DJ known as Bambounou. His influence worked its way into early iterations of the percussion parts, which grew into a rhythmic groove that served as the underpinning of the work’s opening. From there, I designed five more grooves, for a total of six contrasting rhythmic grooves that would serve as the rhythmic basis of the entire work. From a harmonic standpoint, I assigned a different key area to each groove proceeding through a pattern of chordal relationships that would provide a cyclical tonal structure, landing in the original tonal area of the original groove. A final groove in the piece takes source material from previous sections and overlays them together, creating an exciting and inevitable build-up that layers material in a complex finale.
Instrumentation:
For Concert Band:
Piccolo
Flutes 1,2
Oboes 1,2
Bassoons 1,2
Clarinets in Bb 1,2,3
Bass Clarinet in Bb
Alto Saxophones 1,2
Tenor Saxophone
Baritone Saxophone
Trumpets in Bb 1,2,3
French horns in F 1,2,3,4
Trombones 1,2,3
Euphonium
Tuba
Double Bass
Piano (including solo passages)
Percussion (7 parts)
Percussion set-up:
Percussion 1 — Timpani and shaker
Percussion 2 — Toms-toms
Percussion 3 — Bongos
Percussion 4 — Cymbal, tenor drum, bass drum, glockenspiel
Percussion 5 — Claves, tambourine, triange
Percussion 6 — Xylophone
Percussion 7 — Marimba