Compositions pieced together from diary entries and sounds of percussion instruments, meshing with a backdrop of computerized tape loops, will be played by the percussion ensemble Tuesday.
Joseph Van Hassel, visiting professor who teaches percussion, will join David Crider and Gregory Becker, both graduate students studying music performance, to direct the ensemble.
Van Hassel said that for the concert, he tried to find music pieces written for percussion ensembles that aren’t normally played.
“There will be a variety of styles,” Van Hassel said. “There is a piece with electronics, a piece kind of based on additive and subtractive processes, and there are a lot of different things going on and lots of ideas coming out of them.”
Van Hassel assembled one particular piece titled “Changing Tensions” from scores he found in the Library of Congress. It was originally written in 1938 by dancer and composer Franziska Boas and has only been performed about five times, Becker said.
“These (pieces) stretch the boundaries even more of what music is, and I think that is really important,” Becker said about the music that will be performed at the concert.
Another significant part of the concert will be the world premiere of a piece written by well-known composer and percussionist David Macbride. The piece, titled “Light Waves,” is written for six musicians on two vibraphones and two glockenspiels, said Eric Paton, a graduate student studying music performance.
Paton said that it was an exciting opportunity to be able to premiere Macbride’s composition at Ohio University, particularly because Macbride will be in attendance to workshop the piece before it is performed Tuesday night.
“I’m mostly excited about exposing people to music they haven’t experienced before,” Van Hassel said. “It is also exciting to see the students’ reaction to the music we are playing (for the concert).”
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