During the summer months Faith Lutheran Church reduces from three Sunday morning services down to two. Also, because the Spirit of Faith choir takes a break during this time, there are many opportunities for instrumentalists and vocalists to lend their talents to the worship service. I decided last month to fill one of the slots with my friend Andy and play some marimba+english horn and marimba+oboe duets.

Many marimbists are probably familiar with Leigh Howard Stevens‘ transcriptions of Tchaikovsky‘s “Album for the Young” for solo marimba. Instead of playing this as a marimba solo, we divided the part and made a duet. You can listen to the “Waltz” here.

For the marimba+english horn part, we decided to try one of the Bach two part inventions. Our intentions were good, but we will wait until round two before posting that duet. 🙂

My friend Andy’s blog post has more on the event if you are interested.

The Samobor Music Festival will be held September 27th-30th in Samobor Croatia. This year as part of the festival there will be a marimba week featuring Ivana Bilic and Emmanuel Sejourne. The seminar is for “performers and teachers of all ages and nationalities”. You have the ability to register as an active or passive attendant depending on if you would like to perform in the masterclasses.

I had the opportunity to meet Ivana Bilic at the Zeltsman Marimba Festival this summer. Her performance of Steve Mackey’s “The Beast” was stunning and I hope continues to be part of her repertoire. Emmanuel Sejourne is the composer of “Katamiya” which was the recent piece that was learned for the Steve Weiss interactive music contest, as well as one of my favorite marimba pieces of all time “Nancy”.

Plan a trip to Croatia and join these two world class marimbists! For more information, visit their website.