Percussion
chamber music, which began around 1929, is music for small groups of musicians
who produce sound by hitting their instruments. Since this art form began less
than 100 years ago, it is still in an experimental development stage. As it is historically a male dominated field,
my research is focusing on increasing female representation in percussion
chamber music. In order to do this, I have commissioned two new works for
percussion chamber group by women and started a short timeline of significant
female contributors to the art who have been forgotten over time.
My day
to day process changes frequently due to the two part division of my project.
Some of my most important commission-related tasks include emailing composers,
writing contracts for commissions, putting together groups to perform,
practicing music to perform, and scheduling rehearsals. Some of my most
important tasks for the timeline have included spending time in the library
researching scores and sifting through works listed by distributors of
percussion music in search of those written by females. Preliminary data shows
that 22.33% of percussion chamber works on Steve Weiss Music, one of the
leading distributors of percussion resources, was written or arranged by
females. A significant portion if these works were written for elementary to
early high school level. Currently, I am at the So Percussion Summer Institute
(SoSI) at Princeton. Here I am learning rehearsals techniques for percussion
chamber music as well as being exposed to many well known contemporary women
composers of percussion chamber music including Angelica Negron, Juri Seo, and
Caroline Shaw. At SoSI I am also working with Anna Meadors to develop ideas for
the trio I commissioned.
