On March 29th, 2005, I gave my final graduate recital in percussion performance. I hung up my mallets and focused my energies on studying composition, figuring I would never perform again in a solo recital setting.
I don’t listen very well to myself, apparently.
Please join me on March 29th, 2018, as I give my first solo recital in (exactly) 13 years. Essentially, this is a dual composition/percussion event, as I’ll be premiering a new 50-minute work written specifically for this recital, titled Meditation on Paraphrase as an Antonym of Quotation. Bookending the work will be Meadowlark by Tawnie Olson, and a small contribution to the Bernstein centennial.
Program notes for Meditation on Paraphrase as an Antonym of Quotation:
Meditation on Paraphrase as an Antonym of Quotation is the third and last of my Meditations for a solo percussionist. These pieces are not to be considered “music to which one meditates.” Instead, they are the result of long meditations on a particular subject. The first, Meditation on the Eve of John Cage’s 100th Birthday, was the result of a meditation on chance operations. The second, Meditation on Italo Calvino’s ‘The Castle of Crossed Destinies,” was the result of a meditation on different paths of a linear structure as determined by the placement of elements within a frame. During the composition of the third piece, I was occupied, at times to an unhealthy level bordering on obsessive, with two subjects: Kafka, specifically the absurd and grotesque situations and environments in which he places his characters, and distortion, specifically the first entry in Merriam-Webster’s definition of the term: “the act of twisting or altering something out of its true, natural, or original state: the act of distortion; a distortion of the facts.”
Anthony Donofrio 