Purchase Percussion Ensemble
Conducted by Raymond DesRoches
4-27-2000
Performing Arts Center, The Recital Hall
Purchase College, NY
(State University of New York "SUNY" at Purchase College)

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LINEAGE:

Stereo Microphones -> Sony DAT -> Steinberg Cubase SX -> Waves Audio Plugins (stereo spread, EQ, minimal compression)
-> Steinberg Wavelab for track indexing -> FLAC Frontend Level 8 -> Traders Little Helper



01 Suite for Percussion (Lou Harrison c.1940)
02 Ionisation (Edgard Varese, c.1931)
03 Ray DesRoches' remarks
04 Ballet Mechanique (George Antheil c.1927)
05 Metaphor for Vibraphone (Robert Pollock c.1998)
06 Antiphonies for Percussion (David Saperstein c.1972)


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ABOUT THE CONDUCTOR:

Raymond DesRoches, (1931 - ) master conductor, percussionist and professor, obtained his Masters degree
from Manhattan School of Music, where he studied with Paul Price, a pioneer in percussion ensembles.
Upon graduation, Mr. DesRoches was invited to join the newly formed Group for Contemporary Music and
the Contemporary Chamber Ensemble. These highly acclaimed groups dedicated themselves to the high quality
production of contemporary music throughout the 1960s, 1970s and early 1980s. Their performances
involved tours of North America, Europe, Australia and Asia. Mr. DesRoches has recorded for Columbia,
Angel, Nonesuch, Desoto, Composer�s Recording Inc., New World and the Composers Guild of New Jersey.
In 1986, he was presented with the Laurel Leaf Award by the American Composer�s Alliance for his
contributions to American Music. Mr. DesRoches was a long time faculty member at William Patterson
University, SUNY Purchase and SUNY Stony Brook, until retiring in 2003.

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ABOUT THE COMPOSERS:

Lou Harrison, (May 14, 1917 � February 2, 2003) was an American composer and a student of Henry Cowell,
Arnold Schoenberg, and K. P. H. Notoprojo. Harrison is particularly noted for incorporating elements of
the music of non-Western cultures into his work, with a number of pieces written for Javanese style
gamelan instruments, including ensembles constructed and tuned by Harrison and his partner William Colvig.
The majority of his works are written in just intonation rather than the more widespread equal
temperament. Harrison is one of the most prominent composers to have worked with microtones.

Harrison's "Suite For Percussion" (c.1940) is a particularly important piece in the history of the
development of percussion music. It is also attractive and beguiling in its variety of non-pitched
or semi-pitched percussion color, and for its use of "junk instruments."

After writing a few dance scores with percussion, Harrison planned this work as an item for a percussion
concert. It is a ten minute piece in three balanced movements of between three and four movements each,
in a standard layout of Moderato -- Slow -- Moderato; Allegro. The constructive principle Harrison used
was organization of contrasting rhythms.

The orchestration of the piece is for five players who play three sets of muted brake drums, triangles,
dragon's mouths, small bells, clock-coils, a large washtub, thunder-sheet, tam-tam, medium Chinese gongs,
and bass drum. The predominance of metallic sounds (only some of which are ringing or bell-like) gives
this work an unusual sound among all percussion pieces -- only the bass drum was a standard item in orchestras
at the time.

One of the most original and striking portions of the score occurs in the second movement, where Harrison
stresses sustained sounds, with long tones rising and falling in loudness from the thunder-sheet, while
the dragon's mouths has the "melody."

The first movement contrasts irregular and regular rhythms, while the finale deliberately contrasts
irregular rhythms and rhythms in uneven beats with a basic pattern of binary rhythms in twos and fours.
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Edgard Var�se, (December 22, 1883 � November 6, 1965) was an innovative French-born composer who spent
the greater part of his career in the United States. Var�se's music emphasizes timbre and rhythm. He was
the inventor of the term "organized sound", a phrase meaning that certain timbres and rhythms can be grouped
together, sublimating into a whole new definition of music.

Edgard Var�se challenged traditional conceptions of noise and instead found ways to transform noise into
music; Var�se believed that noise was, subjectively, "any sound one doesn't like," and he perceived music
as a mere organized collection of noises, with composers being responsible for organizing noises in a
pleasing way for the listener.

Although his complete surviving works only last about three hours, he has been recognized as an influence
by several major composers of the late 20th century. Var�se saw potential in using electronic mediums for
sound production, and his use of new instruments and electronic resources led to his being known as the
"Father of Electronic Music" while Henry Miller described him as "The stratospheric Colossus of Sound."

Ionisation, (c.1931) is an often-performed musical composition by Edgard Var�se written for thirteen
percussionists, the first concert hall composition for percussion ensemble alone (although Alexander
Tcherepnin had composed an entire movement for percussion alone in his Symphony No. 1 from 1927). The
premiere was at Steinway Hall, on March 6, 1933, conducted by Nicolas Slonimsky, to whom the piece was
later dedicated. One critic described the performance as "a sock in the jaw." This piece has become a
staple for percussion ensembles.
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George Antheil, (July 8, 1900 � February 12, 1959), the self proclaimed �Bad Boy of Music� was an American
avant-garde composer, pianist, author and inventor whose modernist musical compositions explored the modern
sounds � musical, industrial, mechanical � of the early 20th century.

Spending much of the 1920s in Europe, Antheil returned to the US in the 1930s, and thereafter spent much of
his time composing music for films and, eventually, television. As a result of this work, his style became
more tonal. A man of diverse interests and talents, Antheil was constantly reinventing himself. He wrote
magazine articles (one accurately predicted the development and outcome of World War II), an autobiography,
a mystery novel, newspaper and music columns. In 1941 he co-patented a "Secret Communications System" with
actress Hedy Lamarr that used a code (stored on a punched paper tape) to synchronise random frequencies,
referred to as frequency hopping, with a receiver and transmitter. This technique, which is now known as
spread spectrum, is now widely used in telecommunications.

In Ballet Mecanique, (c.1927) his most infamous work. The composer created an updated, energized, discordant
soundworld of the 1920s (which included a siren, propellers, and electric bells).

Ballet mecanique originally called for 16 pianolas to be operated from an electric console, although the
technology available could not transform Antheil's dream into reality. This plan, however, illustrates the
composer's adherence to musical mechanicism. Antheil restored Ballet Mecanique several times to adapt to
the constraints of each new performing group and venue.

The American premiere of the work, which took place at Carnegie Hall in April 1927, included Aaron Copland
and Colin McPhee among the 10 pianists. The audience, aware of the scandal of the Paris performances,
seized the chance to demonstrate. So uproarious were the Paris and New York riots that, in 1931, Randall
Thompson wrote the following in Modern Music. "In the popular imagination [Antheil's] music has come to
symbolize the very acme of demented modernism." Antheil restored his Ballet mecanique for four pianos and
percussion in 1952-53, the instrumentation used in this recording.
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Robert Pollock (1946- ) received a B.A. in Music from Swarthmore College, and M.F.A. in Musical Composition
from Princeton University. He is founder and director emeritus of the Composers Guild of New Jersey, and now
a full time resident of Maui. He has organized over 300 new music concerts and, as pianist, he has premiered
over 100 compositions by composers from around the world. He founded Ebb & Flow Arts on Maui in 1999. He has
received numerous commissions and awards including Guggenheim Fellowship, NEA Grant Fellowship, several New
Jersey State Fellowships and Composers String Quartet Award, first prize. Several of his works are recorded
for CRI, Furious Artisan, CRI and CGNJ labels, and several works published by Mobart, E.C. Schirmer, Veritas
Musicae and Rosalime Productions.

Metaphor For Vibraphone was commissioned by Composer's Guild of New Jersey in 1998, as part of the solo
vibraphone volume initiated by professor Peter Jarvis (William Patterson University).

Pollock uses a �spiral scale,� his own invention. In this piece the scale is (starting from the top going
down) A-G#, F#, D#, B, F#, C, F, A, C, D, D#. Twelve pitches, but four are repeated. The four pitches that
do not occur in this spiral scale are G, E, C# and A#. First occurrence is in m.9 (G and C# - then in E in
mi.13, A # in m. 14, and so forth.

The spiral scale has implied tonality � particular tritone related harmonies, B major and F major. And the
scale can be used for its �dissonant: intervals as well. The central Sonority is B, D#, F# and G# - somewhat
like B major, but using a four factor chord, not three.

�My spiral scale gives me total connections, and also provides ways of using all twelve pitches and intervals
�atonally,� but harmonically. It also gives me a flexibility and range that strict, �classical� serialism
does not.� (Robert Pollock in an email to the performer, July 1999)

This recording represents the New York premier of the piece, and only second performance ever.

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DAVID SAPERSTEIN, born in New York, holds degrees from Princeton and Brandeis universities, where his teachers
were Milton Babbitt, Arthur Berger, and Seymour Shifrin.

ANTIPHONIES FOR PERCUSSION, (c.1972) in three sections, was composed in 1972 for the New Jersey Percussion
Ensemble. It is based on a principle of complementing two matched but opposing groups of three players, each
member of a group sharing particular instrumental timbres with his counterpart. A seventh player, located
physically in the center of the ensemble, is "unpaired" and functions as a point of balance between the
antiphonal elements.

Mr. Saperstein was in the audience for this performance and took a bow from his seat when acknowledged by
conductor Ray DesRoches. A wonderful moment.


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