The Santa Fe Marimba Festival is set for June 6-9, 2012. Currently the artist list includes Gordon Stout, David Friedman, Dave Samuels, Ludwig Albert, Ivana Billic, Kevin Bobo, Pius Cheung, Chi Cheng Lin, Nanae Mimra, and Valerie Dee Naranjo.
Many of these marimbists were at the Marimba 2010 Festival and Conference so it would be a great opportunity to see many of them again. For more information on registering for the event, visit their website or contact Artistic Director Sam Lunt at “sam@santafemarimbafestival.org”.
Dame Evelyne Glennie is performing in St. Paul on November 13th at the House of Hope Presbyterian Church. The concert starts at 2pm and is free and open to the public.
Marimba One has launched a new website focused on sound. The new site shows the differences between the resonators and also now links to video clips of the sound of the different mallets that Marimba One makes.
I hope to see in the future video examples of the sound of the different keyboard voicing choices (how is the sound different between Premium, Enhanced, Traditional, and Educational) as well.
I always love the artist quotes on the site, but the recent one by Danny Elfman is great:
“All roads led to Ron Samuels and marimba one. We talked about what my needs and expectations were and he went and built me an instrument that exceeded all my expectations. It’s a thing of beauty, both sonically and visually. I’ve already used it in my latest score. It plays and records wonderfully. Thank you marimba one.”
Danny Elfman, Composer, Musician
A new Kickstarter! project has started to send the Rosewood Marimba Band to Puerto Rico. One of my friends Kyle-Maxwell-Doherty is a member of the marimba band. The awards you get for helping them are very reasonable (for the $15 donation you get a CD). For more information head directly to their Kickstarter! page. Please pledge by July 31st to help them!
Ney Rosauro and Jeff Moore will host the 5th annual summer camp at the University of Central Florida from July 17th to the 23rd. Other faculty include Dr. John Parks and Brian Potts.
More information can be found at the camp’s website.
There is a great project underway at Kickstarter called “Compose. Perform. Inspire. New Voices in Percussion Music.” Kickstarter is a program that attempts to get funding for a project, in this case new percussion compositions, and only if the minimum funds are pledged does the project happen.
This one is started by the Evolution Percussion Duo and has four great composers: Casey Cangelosi, Dave Hall, Baljinder Sekhon, and David Skidmore writing compositions.
Jake and Maria have more information at the Kistarter site. They are within $600 of their goal with 7 days left to meet it. Please join me by donating so the whole percussion community receives some new compositions.
Here is a photo of my new DeMorrow 4.3 octave at Faith Lutheran Church.
DeMorrow Marimba
Charlie at marimbalogy.com has released episode 10 of his marimba video blog series. He walks you through unpacking a 5-octave Marimba One and reviews the various features of the instrument.
You can see the episode at marimbalogy.com right now.
Ney Rosauro will be the guest artist at the MacPhail Center for Music “Percussion Showcase” tomorrow 2/26/2011 from 1-5pm. Area high school ensembles will be performing as well as Ney himself.
The event is free for MacPhail students and costs $5 for the general public. For more information see the following brochure.
Momoko Kamiya has released her new CD “Pieces of Peace”. You can read more about it at her Facebook announcement page.
I had the privilege of meeting Momoko Kamiya at the Marimba 2010 International Festival and Conference. She premiered a piece called “Blossoms in the Sunlight” on the opening concert and was part of my previous blog post about the festival.
At minimum everyone should go spend $1 and buy that track right now. It is similar to “Land” and very lyrical and gorgeous. Another favorite is “HATO-OTO” which has a surprisingly jazzy section and is another one of my marimba solo favorites of recent years.
She teams up with Bodgan Bacanu on “Atom Hearts Duo” as well which I will be spending more time listening to this week.
Go support another marimbist and purchase these tracks today!
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