Carnegie Hall!

Mark Buller — Mon, 12 Mar 2012 09:24:42 +0000

Saturday’s concert by members of the Da Camera of Houston Young Artist Program went great — many thanks to everyone who worked so hard to make Nuages a success! I have two more commissions from Da Camera to finish, so I’m hard at work on those.

Up next, though: the Guam Territorial Band, led by Maximo Ronquillo, Jr., is premiering my Embers next Tuesday at Carnegie Hall’s Stern Auditorium (that’s the main hall)! The link to buy tix is here. If you’re in the NYC area, hope you can make it!

Premiere

Mark Buller — Sat, 10 Mar 2012 07:12:24 +0000

As a member of Da Camera of Houston’s Young Artist Program, I’ve had the opportunity to write new works for lots of great performers. The most recent commission was twofold: to arrange a Debussy prelude and to compose a piece in response to it. I chose the prelude Bruyeres, from Book Two, and arranged it for string quintet and vibraphone. The prelude’s rich textures work especially well in the strings. For the response piece, titled Nuages, I filtered Debussy through a filter of contemporary techniques; I follow the formal structure of the original prelude, but in place of Debussy’s pentatonic scales, I use hexatonic; in place of the full diatonic collection, octatonic. As the piece progresses, the texture occasionally clears to allow Debussy’s harmonies to shine through. Finally, in a nod to the “backwards” nature of the Debussy preludes (the titles are placed at the ends of the pieces), Nuages is placed on the program before Bruyeres.

Bruyeres and Nuages premiere today at 3:30 at Houston’s Menil Collection, in a concert chosen as a top pick by Culturemap.com’s music critic Joel Luke. Info here:

Culture Map
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