Thursday, December 10, 2009 at 9:00AM Ellipsis: a new ... piece for percussion ensemble
A couple of years ago while living in Houston, TX, I adjudicated a percussion ensemble contest at Westfield High School featuring all of the schoosl in the Spring Independent School District, hosted by Jason Hall. I witnessed an inspired middle school performance of my piece Mercury Rising. Jason and I started talking about a possible collaboration at that point and finally a year later it came to fruition. The six middle schools of the Spring ISD (Bailey Middle School, Bammel Middle School, Claughton Middle School, Dueitt Middle School, Twin Creeks Middle School, and Wells Middle School) commissioned me to write a 5-minute piece 7-8 players percussionists that had the same kind of energy as Mercury Rising. I just finished writing the resulting piece, Ellipsis, this past weekend.
Ellipsis: A mark or series of marks (...) that usually indicate an intentional omission of a word or a phrase from the original text. An ellipsis can also be used to indicate a pause in speech, an unfinished thought.
The title is intentionally ambiguous (and honestly just a word that I like). One can glean whatever meaning they like from the piece itself.
Listen to an electronically generated recording
To learn more about the piece (instrumentation, duration, difficulty level), go to the Ellipsis page.
Reader Comments (2)
Last year we preformed your mercury rising percussion ensemble at oak ridge percussion festival and won an outstanding prize of 1st place. I am now very excited to performe this ensemble get one more 1st place trophy for our band hall. Thank you
Thanks for the comment, Kordell! And congrats on getting 1st Prize!