Episode VI: A Quiet Place to Think

This is a video of the performance at the Premier Performances Concert on November 3rd, 2008 at the East Carolina University A.J Fletcher Recital Hall.

PROGRAM NOTES: A Quiet Place to Think is, above all, a musical exhibition of the brilliance of the human mind. It was composed as the second part of a three-movement work for marching percussion ensemble entitled Energies of the Lifestream, a work that explored the basic energies of life as being Drive, Mind, and Heart. Personally, as a composer, I’ve always found my best ideas, thoughts, and dreams to come about when I would find a quiet place to think. Whether it be at my writing desk, in my truck on the drives back and forth between Jacksonville and Greenville, or even my visits to a silent empty recital hall, the power of the mind, when undistracted by the world’s troubles and worries, is simply… amazing.

A Quiet Place to Think begins with a solo ostinato motif from the vibraphone that is later developed by layering the other mallet percussion instruments over this idea. As the music progresses, it creates a musical texture that builds to a climactic burst of energy that brings birth to a new melody. The melody at this point actually contains quotes from my first piano piece that I had written, Memory, and is accompanied with a much more rhythmic motion. It ends with a groove in the djembe that dissipates into silence, almost the end of the “jam-session of the mind.”

A Quiet Place to Think is short, but I intended for it to be this way. The mind doesn’t need long periods of thought to dream big.

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Nieves!

hhiii!!!