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Play in Public... during Play the Recorder Month!
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Triangle Recorder Society in March 2016,
with Pat Petersen conducting |
March is your opportunity to join in the national swell of recorder music. Make a plan today to play your recorder in a public setting as part of ARS's Play the Recorder Month in March! Play as an individual, as part of a consort, or as part of a recorder orchestra. The American Recorder Society makes it easy by providing music for the event, available through the ARS website to all members free of charge here, and in the Winter issue of American Recorder magazine. Publicity materials (a press release and Public Service Announcement) are also available, as well as a timeline on the PtRM page.
The icing on the cake is that there are prizes for participating. What does it take to be the winning entry? Play frequently, play with a lot of people, play "Waltz," include beginners and/or younger players and publicize your performance. Prizes will be awarded for the most imaginative chapter events, the largest percentage increase in new members of a chapter, consort or recorder orchestra, and the most new members in a chapter.
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Seattle Recorder Society's Play the Recorder Day performance, complete with a belly dancer!
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"Play the Recorder Month" (PtRM) is a fun and engaging event held annually in March by the American Recorder Society. Individual members, chapters, consorts and recorder orchestras in cities across the nation, as well as internationally, are gearing up to perform a variety of recorder music. Past concert venues have ranged from community centers and ferryboats to subway stations and senior centers. Be creative! Be sure to enter the PtRM contest to win great prizes. The deadline for contest entries is April 15, 2017. Please visit the PtRM page on the ARS web site for more information.
During the month of March, on "Play the Recorder Day" (PtRD), March 19, 2017, we encourage our members to play this year's new composition, "Waltz," written by our very own ARS board member, James Chaudoir. Here are some excerpts from his Performance Notes below: "There are no expression or articulation marks... to offer further experimental opportunities for the performers to literally shape the music as they wish... Waltzes fall into many types... the mid-20th century popular dance waltz, jazz, ragtime, mazurka, minuet, ländler, sarabande, scherzo, gigue, gymnopédie, or the typical Viennese waltz."
More about the composer James Chaudoir from an interview with ARS Board Member Nancy Gorbman on 1/4/17:
Q: What inspired you to write for the recorder?
A: I was looking for new music to perform, and a new medium through which I could express my compositional skills. As a composer and woodwind player, I'd always been interested in extended techniques, particularly multiphonics. I discovered that a broad spectrum of sounds was available on the recorder and, through experimentation, I was able to bring out specific pitches within the multiphonic's tone cluster, and incorporate these sounds within a linear structure. One of the results of this work was a performance/lecture entitled "The Melodic Multiphonic" that I presented at composer conferences as a means to introduce the idea of writing for the recorder to others. Of course, not all of my recorder compositions include extended techniques.
Q: What was your first composition for recorder?
A: "Chant des oiseaux" for alto recorder solo and digital replay, composed in 2000. This is a somewhat lengthy piece, just over 15 minutes, which I have performed many times. The digital replay (CD) sounds were recorded while playing a prepared piano. The recorder part is compiled of melodic fragments, and incorporates numerous multiphonics and improvised passages. The performer follows a road map from one fragment to another, while observing a time-line for the accompanying CD.
Q: Now that "Waltz" is complete, what plans do you have for future recorder compositions?
A: I am working on a collection of pieces for solo recorder with "prairie" titles. The first, "Prairie Twilight" for solo alto, is complete. I have sketches for two others, one for tenor, and the other for bass.
If you have any questions, please contact our PtRM Chair, Nancy Gorbman, at ngorbmanars@gmail.com.
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