Concert Report the New, Experimental, and Improvised

Concert Report

The New, Experimental, and Improvised Music Concert was held at the Laidlaw Recital Hall in Mobile, Alabama on November 1 from 7:30-9:00. The concert featured a mix of newly composed pieces, as well as experimental and improvised ones. There were eight pieces in total, performed by both students and professionals. The following report discusses the performers and their pieces, in sequential order.

John Goforth performed the first piece; he is a senior majoring in music and is the Presser Scholar of Music. He presented a new composition.

Goforth's piece is titled "Adam vs. The Monster." It was performed on trumpet; the piece is soft and slow-tempo and incorporates a percussive ensemble.

Jerry Alan Bush performed the second piece. He teaches piano performance and literature and is a professor at Piano Faculty at USA.

Bush's piece was composed by John Goforth. It is titled "Heron's Bay," and the piece displays many shifts in tempo and culminates in a forceful ending.

Rachel Moody, Brianna Smith, and Meghan Squier all performed additional pieces that were composed by John Goforth, written for trumpet and the computer.

The pieces performed by Moody, Smith, and Squier vary in style, but each explores the intersections between instrumentation and new media.

Shawn Wright performed the fourth installment in the program. Wright is a junior music major and he performed a new work, titled "Three Dances for Piano." The style of the piece is new, as the pieces were composed shortly before the program.

Wright's "Three Dances for Piano" is notable because each of the dances manages to refer to a different style of music. The style therefore shifts almost continuously, leaving the listener on edge. The piece begins with a choppy, staccato rhythm that gives way to a smoother feel as the piece progresses. The piece begins in the Romantic period, while the second shifts to a more contemporary, 20th century style. Finally, the piece ends by utilizing a Post-Minimalist style. Wright invokes many different composers for the piece, including Chopin and Lizst, Shostakovich and Stravinsky, and John Adams and Phillip Glass.

David Durant presented two new works for brass in the fifth installment for the program. The first is performed by Cam Alidor and is called "A Storm's a Comin." Alidor is a senior music major and a bass trombonist, and Durant composed the piece specifically with Alidor in mind.

The piece is a programmatic solo for bass trombone, and it tells the story of a fierce storm that builds off the coast of an unidentified area. The piece conveys the harshness of the storm through quick and jarring shifts in volume and tempo, with the incorporation of additional sound effects as well. The style is highly experimental

The other piece performed that was composed by David Durant was performed by Lee Hughes, a student who is a senior music major and trumpeter. The piece is titled "The Sound was in the Wind and Surf," and addresses similar atmospheric subject matter to the previous piece performed by Durant. The style is experimental and also new, as it was composed prior to the concert.

"The Sound was in the Wind and Surf" features a much softer melody than "A Storm's a Comin," although there are still many shifts in tempo and style. Sounds often shift volume and the tempo changes without apparent motivation. The piece was composed with the performer specifically in mind, although it draws its inspiration from the atmospheric island winds from a wedding on the coast of Florida.

David Durant also performed a piano solo titled "Bats in the Morning." Durant works as an Associate Professor of Music at USA, where he directs the Music and Technology program and also teaches music composition.

"Bats in the Morning," was improvised and Durant has stated that he intends for each rendition of the performance to be highly distinct. The piece begins slow in tempo but builds force as it progresses. The composer has likened the piece to the effect of witnessing bats in the morning, a descriptor that conveys the sense of surprise that is evoked by the song. The piece is very contemporary in style.