Andrea Clearfield – Composer
Official site of composer Andrea Clearfield. Biography, list of works with audio, score samples, reviews and program notes, photographs, upcoming performances.
Skip to content
  • home
  • Bio
    • Short-Bio
  • Works
    • Opera
    • Choral
      • Three Tenses of Light
      • Here I Am: I Am Here
    • Chamber
    • Vocal
    • Orchestral
      • Hannah’s Prayer
    • Collaborative
  • Audio
  • Reviews
  • salon
  • Performances
  • Recordings
  • Contact

Trax (for marimba quartet)

Scored for: 4 marimbas (with optional vibes)
Duration: 6:22 min.
Premiere: 6/00, Morris Arboretum, Battery 4 Percussion Group
For: Battery 4 Percussion Group
Published by: Angelfire Press. Contact Trudy Chan at Black Tea Music for score and parts.
Contact Andrea.

PROGRAM NOTES

Trax is a work based on rhythm, interval and motive that nods at different musical languages; jazz, funk, blues, baroque, romantic and modern atonal. The work began as a sax quartet, Sax Trax (1997) for the Diastema (France), Helikon (Holland) quartets Prism (US) sax quartets. Later it was arranged as a mallet quartet for the Battery 4 Percussion Group. The piece opens with pointillistic rhythms followed by a quasi blues middle section including some improvisation. Sostenuto lines give way to soloistic passages over slowly evolving harmonies. A brief transition leads into a recapitulation of the opening material where, after a momentary loss of verve, the quartet re-enters with renewed vigor and drives the piece to its close.

LISTEN

Click here to listen to an excerpt of a performance by the Contemporary Percussion Ensemble at Arizona State University.(Scroll down to listen to this work under a different name: “Mallet Madness”)

© 2012 Andrea Clearfield

All images are excerpts from paintings by Andrea's mother, Louise Clearfield