NEXUS with the TorQ Percussion Quartet
with
Special Guest vocalists Lindsay Kesselman and Cory Knight
This multiple movement work by Russell Hartenberger is a real Tour-de-Force for percussion and voice.
The movements’ titles are Prelude, Birth of Time, Muffled Drums, Eternity, Bird of Paradise, Mist Covered Mountains, Allelluia, and Day is Done. Russell writes, “Requiem for Percussion and Voices is a personal reflection on time and timelessness. It does not follow the traditional setting of a requiem mass; instead, its eight movements have associations with death and nature including tolling bells, funeral drum beatings, a Bach chorale, Scottish pipe and drum music, bird songs, bugle calls, and March to the Scaffold from Belioz’s Symphonie Fantastique. “ Russell has drawn on exceptional musical memories – as a toddler being pulled up and down by the bell rope in his hometown church; loons he heard on a remote northern British Columbia lake; the drum beatings he played as part of the US Air Force Band stationed in Washington DC; a flute tune heard in Ghana; a bird song noticed in Arizona.
