Snare Drum Quintet. (2008-2010)
Some years ago I played with one of my percussion ensembles a snare drum quartet by Igor Lesnik called Chamade Suite (great piece BTW!). One day we had a gig but we were only supposed to play music by Colombian composers, but we still wanted to play that piece! So I said “Ok, I’ll write a Colombian piece like Lesnik’s piece that we can play.” The recording below is from a couple of years later when we had the chance to play it with my percussion ensemble ICTU5.
Lesnik’s piece has a very colorful approach to the snare drum and also has the energetic and rhythmic writing proper of percussion music, and I wanted to explore those elements deeper. The dances in Suite are inspired by the folk music from the coasts of my country—that are quite similar to many other dances throughout the continent—and the challenge was to push the “primitive” snare drum to get more colors and to be able to create a long piece of music based only on the sounds of this instrument. Looking for expansion in the colors of the instrument I asked the performers to play with different kind of mallets, bare hands, and even singing (Percs: time to show off your sight singing skills!). The song in Chigualo, the second movement is a traditional song titled “Velo que bonito” [Look at him, so beautiful] and it is part of the oral tradition originated on the Colombian pacific coast. It is still is both used as a funeral song for a child and as a praise for baby Jesus.
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