Performed by Cameron Bright
Recorded by Paul Oliver
Three Moves for Marimba (1998) by Paul Lansky
THREE MOVES FOR MARIMBA by Paul Lanksy is regarded as one of the most difficult pieces written for solo marimba, but it's also extremely accessible and entertaining to your average audience. The first Move, Hop(2), is written with a heavy jazz/blues influence, and it's almost like the marimbist is playing all of the parts of a jazz quartet at once. Very wide leaps and range stretches abound in this movement. The second Move, Turn, is much more conservative in motion, with a lilting rhythmic ostinato that permeates the entire way. Think of this movement like an alternative chorale. The final Move, Slide, brings back the energy with a chromatic jazzy frenzy filled with scalar lines and rapidly switching voices. This movement almost sounds like it came out of a Film Noir soundtrack. - Michael Dooley
PAUL LANSKY (b. 1944) is an American composer famous for his pioneering work in computer music and sound synthesis. His music became very attractive to percussionists, and has written around a dozen pieces for percussion since the 1990s. He studied at Manhattan's High School of Music and Art, Queens College and Princeton University, studying with George Perle and Milton Babbitt, among others. From 1969 until his retirement in 2014 he was on the faculty at Princeton University where he retired as the William Shubael Conant Professor of Music. In 2000 he received a lifetime achievement award from the Society for Electro-Acoustic Music in the United States. In 2009-10 he was the inaugural composer in residence with the Alabama Symphony. In 2016 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
CAMERON BRIGHT is a percussionist, composer, and educator from Fort Worth, Texas. In 2020, Cameron graduated from Texas Christian University with a Bachelor’s Degree in Music Education and is currently pursuing a Master of Music in Percussion Performance at the University of Alabama.
Hop(2); 00:00
Turn; 04:23
Slide: 08:14