Composer’s Name: Aaron Jay Myers
Title of Piece: Skin
Number of Percussion Players: 1
Total Number of Players: 2
Instrumentation: tenor saxophone and marimba
Approximate length: 9 min.
Program Note:
“The score is a combination of metered, proportional, and graphic notation. This creates a rhythmic and harmonic consistency while creating the organic feeling of free improvisation and maintaining an overall structural congruency. The pitched material is derived from a 16-tone row (with repetitions of some pitches) created by attaching two transpositions of the Purvi Indian scale, as well as the very free use of a 12-tone row.
Skin. People have based entire doctrines of belief upon it and used it as an excuse for hatred and violence. It is strong and protects the rest of our more vulnerable body parts and organs, yet it is also extremely vulnerable itself. From more benign things such as skin color, freckles, pimples, moles, and wrinkles, the annoying and sometimes dangerous things such as bug bites, acne, and warts, to more treacherous and sometimes fatal oddities such as various types of cancer or serious infections; Skin is our largest, and arguably strangest, organ.”
– Aaron Jay Myers
Categories: Mixed Ensemble
Annotated by Matt Sharrock