My Concertino for trombone and electronics, Op. 19b was created in several sittings between spring and fall 2016. This makes it the first new composition I have completed since beginning graduate school in Louisville, Kentucky. The first movement is an adaptation of an earlier Study for trombone and player piano composed between 2013 and 2014, and included as part of my Studies for Player Piano in Concert, Op. 19. The second and third movements were newly written to complement the first movement which itself was given an electronic accompaniment to match the two new movements. In some ways, the Concertino is a throwback to my earliest compositions—the many electronic poems I had written from 2008 to 2011—but in other ways it points in wholly new directions that I hope to explore in future works.

 

The First Movement Sonata. Andante – Moderato parodies a series of tacky pre-Classical era trombone concerti written by Leopold Mozart, Michael Haydn, and other composers. This is not accomplished through actual quotations from these composers, but through attributes I have abstracted and parodied from these concerti and other works of their era. Johann Stamitz, the founder of the Mannheim school, for example, is the victim of events which occur in threes. The Second Movement Cadenza. Andante is modeled after a similar movement in the Third Brandenburg Concerto by Johann Sebastian Bach where a solo improvisation on harpsichord is meant to occur over a single cadence in the accompanying strings. Although I have notated my own cadenza, I also allow the soloist to improvise should he choose. In the Third Movement Rondo. Allegretto, history is overturned and ignored as the Classical and Modern elements are subsumed into a naïve sort of music. The broken A theme with its four nearly-repeated melodic statements is paired with B and C sections each developed from a universally-known song, recovered from childhood. You will need to figure out which songs yourself though!

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Read More at MusicCentral:

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82. "Historical Parody or Naivety – Thoughts on My Trombone Concertino, Op. 19b"

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Performances:

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May 1, 2018. Nachtmusik von BrainSurge, Alexandria, Louisiana. Matt Petty, soloist. Program Notes

 

 

Please contact me for performance materials.