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About “Twenty”

“TWENTY” is a marimba solo inspired by the guitar music of Bruce Cockburn. Madeline Dethloff was a colleague and friend of mine in the Blair School of Music Percussion Studio at Vanderbilt University. She asked me to write a piece for her before I graduated, so I wrote this piece and gifted it to her on her twentieth birthday. Thematically, “TWENTY” should sound cheerful and celebratory.

Structurally, “TWENTY” is built around several different rhythmic ostinatos. The melody is plucked from these ostinatos as accented notes. The use of two-tone mallets may be helpful in distinguishing the melodic material from the ostinato texture.

“TWENTY” is great for students looking for a moderately challenging four-mallet marimba solo that blends contemporary percussion with pop music sensibilities in odd-meters.