Title: "Slide Grease"
Orchestration: Chamber music
Kind: Unaccompanied Solo
Difficulty: Grade 6
Duration: 9 Minutes
Instrumentation: Trombone
Notes on the work
This work is an experiment of sorts. My idea at the outset was how can I express a certain musical statement, through the lens of change, over time? I suppose that, in Slide Grease, I sought to portray, in a musical way, this notion that you can express something in various ways, taking a thought or motif and, through the lens of various iterations, change it, or rather bring it to a place where it’s perhaps a better version of itself. Like saying the same thing, but over time becoming better and better at saying it: Is this the definition of practice?
Anyway, another thought that occurred to me in the process of writing this piece was that of cooking. Notice how you can take the raw ingredients to a meal (vegetables, meats, etc.), and observe their status throughout the cooking process. By the time one is ready to sit down and eat, notice that the ingredients are still the same, but yet the meal is cooked, seasoned, and ready for consumption. That’s what Slide Grease is about.
Better yet, take a theme or motif by Gustav Holst or Sir. Malcolm Arnold, and transform it into one by Duke Ellington or Thelonious Monk, and you’re in the ballpark…Finé!
Movement Titles
- Entrada, 16%
- Caprice, 27%
- Building Blocks, 43%
- Song To Myself, 62%
- Tuning Slide (Interlude), 81%
- *Scrap Parts*
- Finé, 100%
Additional Commissioners
- Myles Blakemore
- Vincent Gardener
- Dandrick Glenn
- Dunwoody Mirvil
- James Nova
- Anthony Williams
