Tilted Spheres

Dave Hall

General Info

Year of Published: 2015
Publisher: C. Alan Publications
Difficulty: Intermediate
Duration: 00:06:30
Cost: $36.00

Instrumentation

Player 1: 3 Roto-Toms & Spring Coil & Prayer Bowl & Concert Bass Drum
Player 2: Concert Snare Drum & Hi-Hat & China Cymbal (Small) & Crotale (selected to match pitch of prayer bowl)
Player 3: Field Drum & Hi-Hat & 2 Thai Gongs & Large Timpano & 1 Crotale
Player 4: 4 Concert Tom-toms & Multiple Bass Drum & Large Frame Drum & Ribbon Crasher & Energy Chimes
Player 5: Multiple Bass Drum & Tam-Tam & Piccolo Snare Drum & China Cymbal(Large) & Crotale & Energy Chimes

Program Notes

Tilted Spheres is named after a sculpture by Richard Serra, one of my favorite artists. He has prominent pieces in three places I've lived: Fort Worth, TX; Lincoln, NE; and Bilbao, Spain (although Tilted Spheres itself is actually installed in Toronto). I love the huge scale and industrial look of his sculptures, but they also have amazing acoustic qualities. A clap or a stomp will undergo different degrees of echo and timbral distortion, depending on how loud the sound is and the sonic vantage from where it is observed. This has always sort of blown my mind, so I set out to replicate the "Richard Serra experience" in this piece.

The piece is a quintet for (mostly) non-pitched percussion instruments. After I completed the piece, it occurred to me that almost every instrument present had a circular shape. All of these different sized "spheres" interact in different combinations throughout the work to create a compelling rhythmic and timbral discourse. Tilted Spheres was commissioned by a consortium of professional, collegiate, and advanced high school ensembles and premiered by the Aledo Percussion Ensemble at the 2014 Percussive Arts Society International Convention in Indianapolis.

Works for Percussion by this Composer

Amorphous Solid
Apocalyptic Etude
Archipelagos
Ascends the Sky
Disarchitecture
Doors
Escape Velocity
Innerludes
Liminality - Percussion 12
Pyroclastic Steam
Skylight
Slide
Surfacing
The Persistence of Memory
Tilted Spheres