'Haskalah' (2017) for marimba and organ by William Susman

Описание: Performed by Joseph Gramley and Clive Driskill-Smith 'Organized Rhythm'.

'Haskalah' (2017) for marimba and organ by William Susman


WILLIAM SUSMAN (born 1960) Haskalah (commissioned 2016, premiered 2017, San Luis Obispo.)

Joseph Gramley met William Susman about fifteen years ago after a Silk Road concert in California. He quickly realized that Susman was “a superb pianist who really gets the marimba—something not always true of composers who don’t play the instrument themselves.” A few years later Gramley recorded one of Susman’s compositions, “Marimba Montuño,” for his CD Global Percussion.

Susman was born in Chicago and grew up learning jazz and classical piano before studying composition at the University of Illinois and Stanford. Perhaps his most important mentor was the composer Earle Brown, who in 1985 selected him, then only 25, to be the youngest recipient of Harvard’s Fromm Music Foundation Commission, which goes to path-breaking classical composers.

In recent years Susman has gained recognition for the scores he’s composed for documentary and independent films, but it’s his innovative classical work, widely performed in Europe and the U.S., that has won him the awards of organizations ranging from the Percussive Arts Society to ASCAP.

When Gramley asked Susman to write a piece for marimba and organ, the composer thought the combination sounded unusual and appealing. He told Gramley and Driskill-Smith: “Pairing the marimba, whose sound rapidly dies away after striking, with the organ, whose sound, when a key is held, never dies, seemed a logical mingling of opposites.” Susman envisioned the sounds of the marimba resonating with the organ in a gradual increase of rhythmic activity and overall volume. “Haskalah,” the piece that resulted, has three sections that merge into one another, titled “An Ethereal Bright Light”, “Converge and Accelerate”, and, “Gliding to Infinity.”

Recorded October 31, 2017, Hill Auditorium, Ann Arbor, Michigan. www.susmanmusic.com recorded and edited by Dave Schall

Commissioned and premiered by Joseph Gramley and Clive Driskill-Smith 'Organized Rhythm'