Joseph Hasper
Joseph Hasper
Composer

Blog

13 Sep 2012

New Work for Flute, Trombone, Piano, and Percussion

Yesterday I finished a new work, Nyan Mixxim Meow, and today I submitted it to the Oklahoma Composers Alliance "Chopped Composer" competition. The piece will be performed later in September as part of the OCA's fall concert series.

Nyan Mixxim Meow is scored for flute, trombone, prepared piano, and percussion (two tom-toms). The trick was to incorporate several "secret ingredients" required for the OCA competition--the "secret ingredients" were published last week and composers were given 2 weeks to complete their scores using the required elements. For this round of competition the required elements were Nyan Cat (a viral YouTube video), gamelan, and hemiola.

Nyan Mixxim Meow takes some direct quotes from the Nyan Cat video, but puts them in the prepared piano part. This makes them almost unrecognizable, as the piano is "prepared" in such a way that the strings sound plucked and very percussive. The frenetic feel of the Nyan Cat video is reproduced by an catchy rhthym ostinato played by the tom-toms and piano. The gamelan is hinted at by the timbre of the piano and the shifting rhythms passed between the drums and piano. The hemiola is carried out by all of the instruments, as triplets are played against an emphatic duple feel.

The piece should be great fun, and I'm looking forward to hearing the other entries in the contest.  

Nyan Mixxim Meow sample mp3


 

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