Steed Cowart - Music for Three Bongos (2017)

Steed Cowart:
Music for Three Bongos (2017)
I. Brisk
II. Dirge
III. Son Cubano (with a nod to James Tenney)
Tony Gennaro, Tim Russell, Imogen Teasley-Vlautin: bongos
(members of Mills College Percussion Ensemble)
Mills Performing Group
Jeannik Méquet Littlefield Concert Hall
November 17, 2018
Mills College
Oakland, California
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Percussionist William Winant suggested that I compose a piece for three bongos. A composition for three bongos would be useful for both professional and student percussion groups and potentially present lots of opportunities for performance. It seemed like a good idea to me. I also liked the challenge of composing for such a narrowly limited palette of sounds. Music for Three Bongos is the work I composed as a result of Willie’s suggestion. It has three movements in a very traditional fast-slow-fast sequence.
When thinking about the piece I might compose, I remembered James Tenney’s Three Pieces for Drum Quartet and looked over the score. In the first movement of his piece, Wake for Charles Ives, Tenney took a rhythm that Ives frequently used, and through several repetitions Tenney elaborated Ives’ rhythm. The movement is a canon with successive entrances of the parts offset by an eighth note. I stole this idea from Tenney for the third movement, Son Cubano (with a nod to James Tenney), of my composition. In Music for Three Bongos I use a rhythm commonly played by claves in Cuban music and process it in a way very similar to the process Tenney used in his Wake. There is nothing pilfered in the other movements, Brisk and Dirge.
Music for Three Bongos is dedicated to William Winant. It will be published by Material Press in Frankfurt, Germany. materialpress.com/
-Steed Cowart

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Wonderful composition. I like it.