Transitions

Solo Percussion Feature

Transitions is truly an exciting and challenging work for the soloist including virtuosic material on both pitched and non-pitched percussion instruments. This work will captivate any audience with its musical contrasts and fascinate them with the visually stimulating choreography in the soloist's performance.

Program Notes

The concept behind Transitions is that of a single day and the gradual shifts and changes within it. There are three distinct but related segments reflected in the piece: “Dawn, Day, and Dusk”; these form uninterrupted movements in a slow-fast-slow format. Within the faster middle movement is a percussion cadenza. The melodic and harmonic content of Transitions is based almost entirely on the B half-whole octatonic scale. The opening pitches in the solo vibraphone form the primary motive of the work and bring continuity to the piece as a whole. After the first statement, this motive is immediately restated in the ensemble’s percussion section, later used as punctuation tones in the cadenza, and finally restated in retrograde in the final measures of the work, again in the solo vibraphone, as an indication of the inevitable connection to the start of a new day. This concerto is truly an exciting and challenging work for the soloist including virtuosic material on both pitched and non-pitched percussion instruments. This work will captivate any audience with its musical contrasts and fascinate them with the visually stimulating choreography in the soloist's performance.

Grade Level: 5
Copyright: 2010
Number of Players: Standard + 1
Duration: 13:00
Publisher: C. Alan Publications
Type: With Soloist
Category: Concert Band

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Instrumentation

Solo Percussion (vibraphone, 4.3 octave marimba, snare drum, bongos, 4 concert toms)

Flute 1-2
Oboe 1-2
Bb Clarinet 1-3
Bass Clarinet
Bassoon 1-2
Alto Saxophone 1-2
Tenor Saxophone
Baritone Saxophone

F Horn 1-4
Bb Trumpet 1-3
Trombone 1-2
Bass Trombone
Euphonium
Tuba

Timpani
Percussion 1 (suspended cymbal, triangle, china cymbal)
Percussion 2 (bass drum, tam tam, hi hat, concert toms)
Mallets 1 (crotales, xylophone)
Mallets 2 (chimes, bells)