Once Removed
John Fitz Rogers
About this work:
"Once Removed" is based on a simple premise: two marimbists play the same or related music at a fairly fast tempo, but they almost never play together. Individually, each performer must execute fairly simple patterns with great rhythmic precision, and to help, each listens to a click track over headphones supplied by an audio CD. However, what is recorded on the CD are two different click tracks on the separate left and right stereo channels (one performer listens to the left channel, the other to the right channel). Though both click tracks proceed at the same tempo, one track stays at a fixed distance behind the other, which mean that one performer is always slightly "behind" the other performer. When their individually simple patterns are combined in performance, the resulting mosaic is both very fast and quite complex—something that sounds more like one "super marimba" than two individual lines.
Of course, the conceptual challenge for the performers is difficult, even though the patterns themselves are not overly virtuosic. Musicians are trained to communicate and to play together, yet in some ways this work entails not listening to each other. Though the technology of multiple click tracks creates new possibilities of texture and ensemble precision, the trade-off in "Once Removed" is that each player remains somewhat isolated from the instrument he or she plays, and more importantly, musically separated from the other performer, like two people trying to reach one another from opposite sides of a thin glass pane.
Year composed: 2003
Duration: 00:08:50
Ensemble type: Chamber or Jazz Ensemble, Without Voice:Percussion Ensembles
Instrumentation: 2 Marimba, 1 Prerecorded Sound (Tape/CD/Other)
Instrumentation notes: "Once Removed" requires two 4.3 octave marimbas, CD playback, two headphones, and either two small mixers (such as a Mackie 1202) or two headphone amps. A complete performance package consisting of two scores and parts, instructions for set-up, two headphone extension cords, two mono-to-stereo adapters, and three CDs for performance and individual practice are available from the composer.