Paperback 8.5x11" saddle-stitched 34 pages Score, Piano score, Via score, piano part, vibe part. Scores beautifully printed at www.lulu.com, also available directly from there. Here a MIDI realization audio download, for reference, is included for free.

“Tremble” for Vibraphone and Piano is a quietly obsessive, meditative, quasi minimalist work that gradually unfolds and moves on to another place. An interval of a sixth is introduced, and the music promptly begins to question its tonality, and becomes a bit ambiguous. The Piano and the Vibraphone are often playing the same material on top of each other, yet “off” a bit. Both parts are written at an intermediate technical level, so the hurdles of performance are more musical, counting, and ensemble related. The work is tonally influenced, and barely settles until the very end [duration ca.: 6’00”].

Unlike most chamber duet settings where one instrument is in the forefront, and the other plays a “supporting role”, this work should be carefully balanced, so at times the two are so well blended that it may be hard to tell who is playing what. The pedal should be used throughout on both instruments- but one must, of course, “play the room” by being sensitive to the instruments. 1/2 and 1/4 pedaling may be needed, and the choice of mallets is entirely up to the player to blend. It should not be too blurry, or impressionistic, it should have a pulse that is moving constantly, yet the overall goal is to create a floating sensation as a totality.

Originally composed as the final part of a soundtrack for the Projects For A New Millennium group’s production of “Terra Mirabila”, a large outdoor spectacle in a granite quarry in Stony Creek, CT from May 28 to June 21st 2005, the first “performance” was only a recording of MIDI instruments. The first official acoustic premier took place years later in New Haven, CT, by percussionist Thomas Kozumplik.