Two Soundpieces - Soundpiece I: Tripartite (Recording)

Gary Smart, Michael Bovenzi

Research output: Non-textual formatAudio recording

Abstract

I was a student at Indiana University when I wrote Two Soundpieces (1969) . The piece was originally written for a friend, tenor saxophonist, Robert Hores, who asked for a piece that used the tenor’s idiomatic “illegitimate” sounds. It was soon picked up by avant garde saxophonist Ken Dorn who performed the piece several times in various new music venues. I moved to Germany in 1970 and soon after lost much of my personal music library, including this piece, in a Cologne warehouse fire. At the time I had just a few copies of most of my works….and suddenly they were gone. As far as I knew, Two Soundpieces , along with several other early works of mine were permanently lost in 1971.

Then, in 2014, quite by accident, I learned that an old xerox copy of a hand-written autograph of Two Soundpieces was housed at the Cleveland State University Library. A scan of that score was obtained via interlibrary loan, the score and sax part were converted into Finale notation and the forgotten work was retrieved and deposited in the “cloud”.

Since it’s rediscovery, Two Soundpieces has been given new life. I think the piece sounds fresh, even though it’s over forty years old. It’s youthful exuberance, it’s enthusiastic embrace of all the saxophone’s quirky resources and it’s energetic improvisational quality make me smile. Though abstract, this showpiece is much more “divertimento” than “serioso”.

Original languageAmerican English
StatePublished - 2016

Keywords

  • piano
  • saxophone

Disciplines

  • Music

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