





The Three
Kinds of Music
for Violin, Violoncello,
and Piano
February 21--June 5, 2010
Duration: about 20 minutes
Full Score, legal size
(pdf)
Cover
Parts
Legal size is best for pianists reading from printed scores on paper. For electronic displays, letter size is more suitable.
Full Score, letter size (pdf)
TKM was premiered on my
Feb. 22, 2011 concert at Duke University.
Eric Pritchard, violin; Stephanie Vial, cello; Vincent van Gelder, piano
video (YouTube)
I. Human Music MP3
Allegro pidooma
[6:41]
II. Angel Music MP3
Namaha Shivaya [7:03]
III. Devil Music MP3
Allegro boogerini: Piu boogerini: Meno
boogerini:
Allegro boogerini: Adagio: Piu boogerini
[6:12]
I wrote The Great American Piano
Trio in 1983 that was premiered at my senior recital at UNT (then NTSU) in
Denton, Texas in 1984. I had hoped that my uncle, a cellist teaching at
Vanderbilt, would take it up, but this did not happen, and as there was no
further interest in this piece I scrapped it. However there was some very good
material in the work, especially in the last movement, and I further developed
this for jazz band in 1990 as the “Allegro boogerini” movement of the Popular
Music of Planet X. (This piece has since been entirely re-written for
concert band, without the boogerini.)
In the last few years I have started
associations with local musicians and performances are now possible for chamber
works. I returned to writing a piano trio in February 2010, with a new first
movement. Then I took the Allegro boogerini and recast it, condensed from the
jazz band version, back into piano trio format, amended and improved, as the
final movement, “Devil Music”. Given this evocative title, the first movement
turned into “Human Music”, which gave me the great challenge of the middle
movement, which had then to be “Angel Music”. (You may notice that my angels
tend to be despondent, while the demons have a good time.) This parallels Boethius with his musica mundana, musica humana, and musica instrumentalis.
"Pidooma", from the tempo
marking of the first movement, is an engineering term denoting the origin of
many useful concepts.
This work is dedicated to my close
friends and superb musicians, violinist Eric Pritchard and cellist Bonnie Thron,
along with cellist Stephanie Vial and pianist Vincent van Gelder, who with Eric
performed the premiere on February 22, 2011 at Duke University. Eric edited the
violin part.
Musician Biographies

Vincent van Gelder, pianist, was born in Rotterdam, The Netherlands, Vincent started
playing the piano at the age of twelve. It was not until two years later, after
hearing the first Liszt Piano Competition in Utrecht, that he became really
interested in music. At first, he studied at a local music school, then was
admitted to the Conservatory of Hogeschool Enschede at the age of eighteen. In
the summer of 1990, Vincent studied with Czerny-Stefanska during the Chopin
masterclasses in Duszniky, Poland. From 1995 till 1997, Mr. van Gelder studied
at the Latvian Academy of Music in Riga, Latvia. His teachers there were
Theofils Bikis and Arnis Zandmanis. Mr. van Gelder holds BM and MM degrees from
the Conservatory of Hogeschool Enschede and MM in performance from the Southern
Illinois University at Carbondale where his teacher was Wilfred Delphin. In
2003, he graduated with a DMA in piano performance from the University of
Missouri at Kansas City where he studied with Richard Cass.
Vincent currently lives in Greensboro,
North Carolina. He appears regularly as a soloist. Recently he performed at the
Focus on Piano Literature conference
in Greensboro, and also was the soloist for Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue with the Greensboro Concert Band.
Stephanie Vial, cellist, is a sought after lecturer,
soloist, and continuo player. She is the co-director and principal cellist of
the Vivaldi Project, and has also performed with such groups as the Atlanta
Baroque Orchestra, Apollo Ensemble, Les Violons du Roy, and the modern/ period
chamber ensemble, Arcovoce. As a baroque cellist, she has recorded for Dorian,
Naxos, Centaur Records, and Hungaroton. Fanfare Magazine, in a review of the
Naxos recording of Quantz flute sonatas, gives “a particular bow to Stephanie
Vial, who manages to make each cello intervention a delight to the ear.” Ms.
Vial received her training on the modern cello at Northwestern University,
followed by a Master’s Degree at Indiana University and a DMA from Cornell University.
She is an adjunct faculty member at UNC-Chapel Hill.
Eric Pritchard,
violinist, has been a
member of Ciompi Quartet since 1995 and was formerly the first violinist of the
Alexander and Oxford Quartets. Mr. Pritchard has taught at Miami University,
San Francisco State University, City University of New York and the North
Carolina School of the Arts. He was winner of the National Federation of Music
Clubs Award in Violin as well as the first-prize winner at the Portsmouth
(England) International String Quartet Competition and the Coleman and Fischoff
national chamber music competitions. He has performed widely as a recitalist
and as soloist with the Boston Pops and orchestras in Europe and South America.
His major teachers were Eric Rosenblith, Josef Gingold, Ivan Galamian and
Isadore Tinkleman and he holds degrees from Indiana University and the
Juilliard School. He has performed many works by Bill Robinson since 2006.