Featured Composition: To Perseverance for Marimba and Woodwind by Michael Eagle

Michael Eagle's To Perseverance (dedicated to Christopher Deane) is a challenging piece of chamber music for marimba and a solo woodwind instrument. When you purchase the score, indicate if you would like an arrangement for flute, oboe, clarinet, english horn, bassoon, alto sax, or soprano sax. About the work, Michael writes:

"This advanced chamber work was written to depict the often overwhelming nature of a early adulthood. The piece begins with trial and tribulation and introduces a lamenting melodic figure that searches for purpose and resolution as aggressive and dissonant figures are seemingly around every corner."

To Perseverance is a versatile piece, great for any chamber concert or solo recital. Perform it with ANY of your woodwind-playing friends. For more information and audio samples, click HERE. And, watch Axiom Percussion's performance for marimba, vibes, and cimbalom (arranged for trio) on YouTube.

Featured Book: 500 4-Surface Patterns by Samuel Solomon

Solo percussion guru Sam Solomon is at it again with another one of his many great books: 500 4-Surface Patterns. This book provides a huge wealth of patterns for 4-mallet percussion playing that can be seamlessly applied to marimba, drum set, and multi-percussion. The concept is simple, but this book is a vast resource with endless applications. To buy it today, click HERE.

Featured Media: (DVD) Wes Crawford's Drumset Play-Along

Wes Crawford's Drumset Play-Along DVD is an innovative teaching tool that is both instructional and fun to use. This interactive DVD puts you on the drum throne with a professional pop band (performed by real professional musicians). Join the band on ten songs--in varying styles, including funk, jazz, R&B, disco, etc.--and perform with them at different "professional" gigs: your audition, club shows, a beach party, and many more. See the band and the venue from the perspective of the drummer while you play along on your drum set. The DVD includes tracks with and without drums and printable charts. This is a great opportunity--for young drummers who lack true professional experience--to feel like they are playing with a real band. Its the fun of Rock Band with real drumming on a real set. Perfect for Kids and Beginners! For more information, click HERE.

Featured Composer: Aaron Trant

"Fire-breathing" percussionist (21st Century Music) Aaron Trant's experience in classical, jazz, contemporary, rock, and improvisatory styles has made him a valuable asset and desired performer and composer for new ensembles around the US. He is a cofounder, composer, and performer for the After Quartet, which is dedicated to performing live accompaniment to silent films. Aaron is also a member of the Firebird Ensemble (assistant director and percussionist), Primary Duo (original member for piano-percussion duo;), Endy Emby (trumpet and percussion), Adam James Wilson Quintet, and High Street Percussion. Additionally, Aaron performs regularly with the Boston Modern Orchestra Players, the Fromm Project, and Alarm Will Sound. As a composer, Aaron has written works for Lisa Saffer, Mark Gould, Firebird Ensemble, After Quartet, Endy Emby and Primary Duo, and he has received the St. Botolph Club Foundation Grant-in-Aid and grants from the New England Foundation for the Arts.

Aaron's contemporary performance and composition resume speaks for itself, so check out Spiral for percussion trio. Spiral is a two-movement work. The first uses cycles of un-pitched percussion to create a melody over interlocked rhythms. The second movement, for primarily melodic pitched percussion, uses a slow, minimalist-style development of a melody over a lush, serene percussion layer of sound. For audio samples from both movements, click HERE.

Additionally, Aaron's xylophone solo "x is always for Xylophone" is featured in the 2010 MassChap Xylophone Collection (take a look in this month's HIGHLIGHTS).

Good luck this spring, Aaron. Keep up the great work!

Highlights (April)

~Bachovich Works in Italian Competition!: Antonio Santangelo's International Competition for Percussion Instruments and Drumset will use the following Bachovich works as required pieces for their competition in September 2010:

-Snare Drum: 2008 PAS MassChap Snare Drum Collection (compiled by Samuel Solomon)
-Marimba: Fear of Silence (Joel Harrison)
-Vibraphone: Monte Nido (Richard Grimes)

~Competition: The IronWorks Percussion Duo & The Bob Cole Conservatory of Music at California State University, Long Beach are holding their 3rd Annual Composition Competition (2010). For more info, visit the Ironworks Percussion Duo online.

~Green Day: Bachovich Composer Trey Files is the drummer for the new Broadway production of Green Day's American Idiot, which opens this month.

~PAS Winner/Previously Published Work now with Bachovich::
Bachovich Music is proud to announce the publication of Soliloquy for solo vibraphone by Larry Spivack. This four-minute work won 2nd place in the 1980 PAS Composition Competition. It was published by the Lang Percussion Company in 1981 but has been out-of-print for many years. Larry Spivack recently revised the piece for the 2010 Edition in the Composer's Manuscript. Click HERE to watch video of Soliloquy.

~Other New Bachovich Compositions this Month:

-Perception Piece for multi-percussion duo by Jared Soldiviero

-Four for Flexatones for four flexatones (video) by Ju Ri Seo

-2010 MassChap Xylophone Collection compiled by Samuel Solomon

The Xylophone Collection was premiered at the 2010 MassChap "Day of Percussion". Bachovich congratulates the winners and contributors to this collection:

Winners:
Daniel Adams
Andrew S. Allen
Jenica Anderson
Victoria Aschheim
Casey Cangelosi
Jamieson Carr
James Charrette
Jeremy Craycraft
Justin Doute
Kirk Etheridge
Kevin Fuhrman
Masaki Hasebe
Fusun Koksai
Gene Koshinski
Setsuko Kutsuno
David Luidens
Lily (Wen) Lu
Dean Marotta
Karlyn Mason
Matthew McDonald
Joe Millea
Robert O'Brien
Alex A. Orfaly
Kazuki Oya
Luke Short
Greg Simonds
Aaron Trant
Philip Trembley
Chun-yu Tsai
Ivan Wan
Nicholas M. White

Invited Composers:
Lou Bunk
Marti Epstein
Peter Gilbert
Lee Vinson
Judd Greenstein
Curtis K. Hughes
Keeril Makan
Nicholas Papador
Joseph Pereira
Adam Roberts
Rudolf Rojahn
Adam B. Silverman
Samuel Z. Solomon
Ken Ueno
Dalit Hadass Warshaw

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~We've Gone Global: Bachovich continues to expand, with sales in Japan, France, Belgium, Poland, England, Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, Spain, China, Taiwan, Luxembourg, Switzerland, and Hungary.