Thad Anderson
I’m excited to announce that composer Zack Browning has a new CD being released on January 31 that features the UCF Percussion Ensemble. Flying Tones is a percussion quintet that we commissioned in 2010 as a dedication for our new Performing Arts facility here on campus. Soon after the premiere in November of 2010, we [...]
I’m in the process of composing a series of pieces I’m calling Lines. Each of these pieces uses a pre-determined set of “duration lines” to help create structure and polyrhythmic interest. More on the duration lines concept in another post. Be sure to grab a sample perusal PDF score of Withheld below.
Special thanks for [...]
Recently picked up a copy of the new Meehan/Perkins disc Travel Diary, which is titled after the duet they commissioned from Paul Lansky (a wonderful disc, I might add). It reminded me of the first time I met Paul back in 2008 at the Round Top Percussion Festival where the M/P Duo premiered [...]
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Chew on this. I know I still am…
I finally got my hands on the A Lou Harrison Reader (thanks to our wonderful ILL office here at UCF), which is a collection of various letters, writings, poems, scores, etc. related to Harrison and compiled by Peter Garland. The collection was published by Soundings Press in [...]
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Over the past few years, I’ve been working on a set of four-mallet marimba etudes to use with students. I was able to put the finishing touches on the first six this summer and we are now using them in our freshman here at UCF.
Book I of Passages is designed as early [...]
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I’ve got another busy fall season lined up so I thought I would share some details:
September saw the introduction of Orlando’s first event featuring new music. The Accidental Music Festival (curated by F.C. Belt) featured a premiere of my new multi-percussion and electronics composition, titled Concertante, as part of [...]
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I’ll premiere a brand new multi-percussion and electronics piece of mine as part of the Accidental Music Festival this Thursday. The work is titled Concertante, which is classical period terminology that refers to the melding of the concerto and symphonic formulas. Imagine a multi-percussion soloist with an orchestra of electronics; at times the [...]
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A few years ago I composed and recorded around 40-minutes of original music for a documentary film called Standard Deviation. The film, directed by the very talented Chris Brannan and David Randag, has gone on to do some pretty incredible things including winning an Emmy at the College Television Awards (not to mention [...]
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Believe it or not, all brake drums are not created equal. Chances are good that the brake drums you have access to in your personal inventory, percussion studio, or band room were made after the “spun steel” era (post 1930 or so). Sure, these drums have their distinctive anvil-like timbre and are widely used in [...]
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With interests that span music, design, and technology, this recent finding caught my attention. Composers often rely on this ratio to help generate formal structure in music but it appears that Apple is making use of it as well. The new iCloud logo is full of golden ratios:
To better understand [...]
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