Description
念2 is the second piece for multiple percussion I have composed, the first being Ojo, which my good friend, Casey Cangelosi, and I co-composed. It is preceded by a mallet sextet I composed in the summer of 2013 titled, 念. Compositionally, the piece is divided into three sections. The first section utilizes only bass drum, somewhat in the fashion of traditional Chinese drumming or Japanese odaiko drumming. The second section is slow and felt mostly without an obvious pulse. It begins with long quiet notes on cymbals and gongs, while the rest of the drums join in later with snippets of motifs derived from the first section. The third sections develops various motifs from the first section, though this time in a style one might consider closer related to western contemporary music. The piece ends with the rhythm of the opening six measures in retrograde, finishing with a long crescendo roll on large gong.
Pius Cheung