One Eighty for percussion ensemble (2020)

One Eighty was written for the TCNJ percussion ensemble under the direction of Bill Trigg. From its conception, it was designed to be a piece performed virtually, and with flexible instrumentation, though I suspect it would work quite well live, too.

Still under tight restrictions due to many universities’ response to COVID-19, Professor Trigg and I discussed some necessary considerations for this piece: it couldn’t use any percussion equipment the students didn’t have access to at home, it had to be flexible in instrumentation, and the tempo had to be steady and crystal clear.

So came about One Eighty, a piece performed with a metronome present throughout at exactly 180bpm (though the tempo of the piece itself does change, placing the metronome beats in different contexts). It was arranged for two stick parts, a body percussion part, and a shaker voice that can use anything from a cabasa to a basic elementary-classroom egg shaker!

Throughout the work, different voices take features, explore different grooves, and stack simple rhythmic ideas to create exciting multi-layered patterns. One section in particular forces the musicians to interpret the steady metronome beat no longer as the quarter-note pulse, but a triplet in which the actual tempo feels more like 120. By the end of the piece, familiar material returns and the piece goes full 360!

Well within the reach of any high school percussion group, I hope this piece may experience a long lifespan and be useful to high school directors looking to provide meaningful music for their students in a time when even that seems especially difficult!