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To Show Them
 

Featured in '25 Green Orange Recital

for Woodwind Sextet

April 3rd @ 8pm PST

In Fred Loewe Performance Hall

Program Notes

To Show Them is based on Composer Steve Reich's 1966 piece Come Out. Reich's piece is a sound collage of edited tape footage from the Harlem Six; the Harlem Six were six black youths who were arrested for the murder of Margit Sugar, a Hungarian refugee, in Harlem in the weeks following the Little Fruit Stand Riot of 1964. From the 70 hours of tapes, Civil Rights activist Truman Nelson presented to Steve Reich, Reich only used four seconds; using the voice of Daniel Hamm, one of the boys involved in the riots but not responsible for the murder. At the beginning of Reich's piece Hamm says "I had to like, open the bruise up, and let some of the bruise blood come out to show them." (Alluding to how Hamm had to puncture a bruise on his body to convince police that he had been beaten in jail.) Within Reich's piece the full statement is repeated once; Reich then re-recorded the fragment "come out to show them" on two channels, that at first play in unison, then gradually slip out of sync to produce a phase shifting effect; the listener is only left with the rhythmic and tonal pattens of the spoken words. 

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To Show Them is the product of me coming into contact with the question, can Steve Reich's electronic piece, Come Out be considered music? In 2022 I decided to test the theory I then revisited the theory when I rearranged the piece for woodwinds. Originally written as a brass sextet, I took the the rhythm derived from the loop "come out to show them," then proceeded to add a melodic line of my own over the rhythmic ostinato. While composing To Show Them, the virtuosic melody took on a jazz-like form. Starting out with a simple melody line that starts with the second clarinet (formerly the second trumpet), that soon evolves into a chaotic call and response between six woodwind instruments; with the ositnato still going strong in the background.

Performer(s): 
Jehsica Castle & Demarqis Frazier (b-flat clarinets), Madelyn Olsen (alto saxophone), Anyssa Peñaloza (tenor saxophone), Ja'Lena Harris (bass clarinet), Emma Boyd (baritone saxophone), Mena Williams (conductor)

 

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