The 6th Keiko Abe International Marimba Festival Academy in Japan has been announced. It will be held from July 31st to August 4th, 2011 at the Toho Gakuen School of Music. This is a very unique opportunity to have private lessons with Keiko Abe herself.
For more information including the application please visit:
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!
One of the great things happening at next year’s PASIC is the 50th Anniversary PAS Marimba Orchestra. Gordon Stout will be conducting. There are 50 slots for students to fill this orchestra and you can apply by heading over to this site.
You do have to bring a marimba with you to PASIC to participate. Good luck to everyone and I hope you pass the audition and are accepted!
“Groundlines” the new composition from John Serry for solo marimba is now available in its entirety at the Vic Firth web site. This recording was from PASIC this year and performed by Ji Hye Jung. Enjoy it!
My work schedule has kept me pretty busy this year so the holiday break allowed me to return to the marimba. Last week I performed “Carol of the Bells” arranged by Nathan Daughtrey.
This arrangement can be purchased as part of the Yuletide Marimba book from C. Alan Publications. The recording is available here on iTunes. I highly recommend adding the book and recordings to your marimba collection!
Over the next few years I will continue to perform them as they work very nicely in a church setting.
Below is a link to an excerpt of the performance. I hope you enjoy it!
As we close on 2010, I wanted to do one final post from the fantastic marimba event from this year – the Marimba 2010 Festival and Conference.
Fernando Meza has posted the final report on the Marimba 2010 website. It includes quotes, photos, and an overall summary of the festival.
Happy New Year everyone!
Nancy Zeltsman has announced that the 2011 Zeltsman Marimba Festival (ZMF) will take place at Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin from June 26th to July 9th.
This year’s faculty includes: Nanae Mimura, Fumito Nunoya, Christos Rafalides, Dane Richeson, Jack Van Geem, Nancy Zeltsman.
For more information including registration materials, please visit http://www.zmf.us
On December 26th at Faith Lutheran Church my wife Heidi and I performed an arrangement of “Birthday of a King” and “O Holy Night”. Heidi had arranged this for piano and voice originally and we decided to perform it together this time with marimba and piano.
One of the members said of this performance “I am glad your marriage survived the key change”.
I hope you enjoy it.
The John Serry commissioning project that I was a part of has completed and the performance was at PASIC 2010. A video of one part of the piece is now up at the Vic Firth website.Ji Hye Jung is performing it in the middle of a larger video containing PASIC highlights.
Start here and then click on “Concert / Marching Highlights”. It is about 1/4 of the way into the video and labeled clearly.