Press Room
SUU Department of Music Presents Patrick Roulet Faculty Percussion Recital
For Immediate Release: February 29, 2008
(Southern Utah University, Cedar City, Utah) The SUU Department of Music presents Patrick Roulet in a faculty percussion recital on Friday, March 7th, 2008 at 7:30 p.m. in the Thorley Recital Hall on the SUU campus. The recital is free and open to the public.
Ted Atkazt, former principal percussionist with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and lead member of the alternative rock band NYCO, joins Roulet in this inspiring, energetic, and musically eclectic evening of music from around the world.
Roulet has assembled an extraordinary array of music that combines his passion for percussion with his love for collaboration with friends from the music community with whom he finds inspiration and kindred spirit -- who just happen to be master composers and superlative percussionists, as well.
Roulet will present Bach's Prelude from the Suite No. 1 in G Major, perhaps the best-known movement from the six suites for unaccompanied cello. Much of Bach's music is easily adapted to the marimba, especially the sonatas and partitas for unaccompanied violin and the cello suites. Roulet finds Bach's music challenging yet extremely rewarding to perform on the marimba where even a simple-sounding phrase requires a high degree of musical understanding.
Roulet also performs two pieces by William Cahn's Affrodity (af rod'i-tee) an eccentric, little, song-like piece for snare drum that uses rhythms of African derivation and, in title, sounds almost like the name of the Greek goddess of love. And Raga No. 1, inspired by Cahn's first exposure to the music of Northern India and by the perceived rhythms and techniques as performed on the tabla, the traditional pair of drums used in North Indian classical music.
A longtime admirer of world-class marimbist, Keiko Abe, Roulet brings not only a composition by the great master but also plays an extraordinary musical instrument developed by her in collaboration with Yamaha, the 5-octave rosewood concert marimba. In Michi for Marimba, ""Mi-chi" indicates the different paths which people must tread, and at the same time refers to the path representing the pursuit of cosmic truth in Eastern philosophy." Abe writes. "At the time I composed this piece, I saw photographs and read an article relating to the excavation of footprints dating from more than two thousand years ago, and was strongly impressed. In the context of human history as a whole, I remember thinking that my own life is nothing but a droplet in the ocean, a speck of sand on the seashore. This piece is a transcription of my performance on that day." (K. Abe)
Roulet presents Ghanaia for Marimba by Matthias Schmitt. The piece is homage to the rhythms of Ghana, and the wisdom of the people who have passed this music on to new generations for centuries. (M. Schmitt)
Two contemporary American pieces wrap up the performance. In Bags' Groove by Milt Jackson, Roulet performs a simple riff-based blues tune written by the jazz vibraphone great. Roulet on Jackson, "(He) is a hero of mine. His music, concept of sound, and phrasing all speak deeply to me. My dissertation: Milt Jackson the Creative Genius behind Bags' Groove was the result of ten years of research, listening and transcribing of Milt's recordings. A few years after Milt passed away, I had the privilege of sitting at Milt Jackson's kitchen table and speaking with his widow, Sandra Jackson. This arrangement of Bags' Groove for solo vibraphone is a tribute to the legacy of Milt Jackson."
Roulet will join his long-time friend and musical contemporary, Ted Atkatz, for Digga-Digga Digga-Digga Digga-Digga Digga-Digga Deegot by David Jarvis, a highly rhythmic work written for two players performing on two small multiple percussion set-ups. The unusual title is a phonetic representation of the main theme, which is heard at the opening of the piece. It is common among percussionists to vocalize (scat sing) rhythmic figures when practicing or communicating with each other. The work was commissioned by the percussion duo Equal Temperament and received its premier performance in May of 1997 at Humboldt State University in California. (D. Jarvis)