Nagoya Marimbas v1.1
This new work, in collaboration with Gravity Percussion, explores the counterpoint in Steve Reich’s Nagoya Marimbas by visualising the two interlocking marimba parts each as a dynamic “Whitney Rose” – occasionally connected together to display the harmonic relationship between them.
It’s an audiovisual study of counterpoint – the harmonically interdependent parts in a piece of music that are independent in rhythm and contour – distinctive to the Baroque Period yet contemporarily explored through Reich’s ‘repeating patterns played on both marimbas, one or more beats out of phase, creating a series of two part unison canons’.
The red dynamic rose pattern follows the first marimba part (panned left) while the yellow pattern follows the second marimba part (panned right). In visualising the harmonic structure within the music the rose variants display a wide range of forms – from complex “spirograph” or “string art” like 2D patterns to curvaceous, 3D vessel-like shapes and exploded helixes of sinusoidal lines.
It was premiered at the Royal Northern College of Music (RNCM) Day of Percussion, 8 Feb 2015.
More details about the work can be found at the Monomatic website.