World Premiere: Sequences

My composition Sequences (2000) will receive its belated world premiere this Saturday, April 20th, 2024 in a concert that runs from 3-4 pm EST. It will be livestreamed for free.

I’ve been waiting 24 years to hear this piece live! It’s for two marimbas and a light drum beat doubled with a synth bassline. It was revised this year for the University of Delaware Percussion Ensemble led by Dr. Gene Koshinski.

The music is from my Madra period, and is similarly small-scale minimalism, with all of its melodic and rhythmic patterns derived from the West African standard bell pattern and the harmony straight out of four-chord pop. It’s highly structured and finely detailed, and can be enjoyed simply with the body: groove music. It’s where I was stylistically just before I decided to put my aspirations as a working musician on pause (for twenty years…)

I don’t know the running order, so if you have an hour in your Saturday and would like to dedicate it to livestreamed percussion pieces… this is for you!

By elmahboob

Bruce A. Russell aka Ibrahim El Mahboob (b. Kingston, ON, 1968) is a composer and self-taught pianist living and working in Toronto (Tkarón:to, the traditional territory of many nations including the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishnabeg, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee and the Wendat). He studied at York University with James Tenney and Phillip Werren. He has composed music for Artemis Musicians' Society, Gryphon Trio, the Madawaska Quartet and Thin Edge New Music Collective. Interest in his work increased in 2020, with performances since then by Arraymusic, Prism Percussion, Second Note Duo, San Juan Symphony and Idaho Falls Symphony, Grant Park Orchestra, Regina Symphony Orchestra, and the Isabel String Quartet and the Mill City String Quartet. He was the composer, music director and keyboardist for writer/performer Ian Kamau’s live multimedia work Loss, which premiered at Harbourfont Centre for the Luminato Festival in Toronto. He was the host of Radio Music Gallery, and has written for Musicworks and I Care if You Listen. His interests are in 20th and 21st century concert music especially postminimalism, and music of the African diaspora.

Leave a comment