on tarantella for tambourines…
| during the summer of 2021 i was able to visit italy to visit my partner’s family - i was struck by the pace of life, the richness of culture, and the deep kindness her family showed me as a guest whom they had never spoken to or met up until that point - as such i decided to write them a piece to thank them for their efforts and compassion - i struggle to call myself a composer, and i struggle to really consider this a composition - there are many things about this piece that frustrated me during the process but several other things that excited me to an equal extent - i don’t need to dwell on the negative but i wanted to give an in depth look at the proccesses and ideas behind the piece in this post |
| first of all is the title and the concept - a tarantella is a couples dance that is famous in italy and many composers have taken it upon themselves to embrace the rhythmic styles symbolizing the movement of the dreaded tarantula - the history of the dance was really evocative for me as it demonstrates a young women’s frantic dance as she tries to cleanse herself from the poison of the spider - this created a vivid image for me to compose from and inspired me to dive deeper into the still alive traditions of the drummers who accompany this folk dance - this, coupled with images and thoughts of skittering spiders, makes up the main thematic material of the piece - another huge portion of this composition is my collaboration with OKAMS RACER and their choreography - i told them the ideas i had regarding the story of the piece, and they came back with some really interesting and appropriate choreography |
| there are four parts to this piece: the spider, the bite, the dance, and what i’m calling the message - each section has a unique sound and characteristic with the first being a sound exploration of the headed tambourines swirling and moving from one tambourine to another - the second section explores theatre a bit more as the performer and the dancers writhe in pain from the bite of the tarantula and begin dancing more vigorously to expel the poison - the dance is the most traditional of all of the sections, taking the approaches of tamburo playing and applying it to a 6/8 skeleton and slowly adding more ornaments until the conclusion of the section - the final section has two purposes - the first is to experiment with my interest and research in gesture and movement in percussion, using perspective and symmetry to remind the audience of an eight-legged spider - the second purpose is as a means to communicate a message to the pent family through morse code rhythms, thanking them for their kindness |
| i don’t know about how this piece will live on going forward - it is a bit abstract, it is particular, it is unequitable in the instrumentation (thank you black swamp percussion for their generous donation of their wonderful tambourines) and it is not the most professionally composed piece - it has shown me how to consider a piece of music from fruition to release and how to do it better next time - i have another few compositions in the works but until those are out, please enjoy tarantella for tambourines in the “watch/listen” tab of this website - cheers |