Each semester, a variety of chamber groups, orchestras, soloists, and world music ensembles take the spot light at a plethora of venus across the University Michigan’s campus. They all have their own sound, whether that is made through a certain genre they play in particular, or because of the instruments used within the ensemble. Two varying groups that compare and contrast well with each other that I saw play this semester was the New York Philharmonic and the University of Michigan’s (U of M) Caribbean Steel Band. The New York Philharmonic was featured at Hill Auditorium, an enormous hall that was packed with over 3,500 people during one of its three concerts in Ann Arbor. They played two pieces, that drastically contrasted with each other …show more content…
The Steel Band concert setting was much more relaxed. People casually dressed were able to walk in for free and hear over twelve pieces of steel pan music. For the final tune of the night, the audience was invited to come up on the stage and watch the pan players interact with their pans to see exactly how a steel pan creates the sound it does. While there was no direct audience participation, this enabled them to gather a whole other dimension of steel pan playing. The majority of the tunes played at the steel pan concert derived from the Caribbean Islands, and 80% of the tunes were taken directly from Trinidad, which borders north of the Caribbean. The reason so many of the tunes come from Trinidad is because this is where steel pan playing first started, and it is where steel pans themselves were first created. The New York Philharmonic concert did not exemplify any reflection of a particular country or nationality during their …show more content…
On the other hand, the New York Philharmonic had a modern piece that was short, yet extremely vibrant. This was contrasting with the long, and simple Strauss symphony. The tunes from the Trinidad region were both upbeat and slow. The upbeat tunes would have intricate melody lines. Meaning, chromatic lines were generously spread throughout them, and there was very little space or rest in these high energy pieces. The slower tunes would have much simpler melody lines. This allowed for players to solo on top of the ensemble during a chorus or verse. Both types were based upon old stories, poems, or tunes that had existed among the people for generations. The modern piece that the New York Philharmonic player, L.A. Variations, was a modern piece that emphasized using a lot of percussion instruments of different timbre and stretched the boundaries of what the instruments were capable of. The piece uses every type of keyboard instrument in the percussion family, there were multiple tuned gongs, bowed vibraphone notes, and scraping the notes on the chimes with a hammer. In addition to this, the brass players all used a variety of mutes, the woodwind players used a lot of sliding in and out of notes, and the stringed instruments all create a whiney or “scratchy” timbre. The piece as a whole seemed to operate as a roller coaster. At times it was lackadaisical, only to