A World of Our Creation - Louis Raymond-Kolker [DIGITAL SCORE]

As dire as that may sound, A World of Our Creation is a call for creative solutions. In presenting some of the composer's favorite creative sounds (bowed vibes, steel pans, desk bells), his hope is to encourage a sense of continued activism, constantly searching for creative solutions to those issues that we know about, and those that are to come. The work is scored for 7 players on metallic instruments.

Genre: Percussion Ensemble | # of Players: 7
Level: Medium Difficult | Duration: 4:30

Instrumentation
Glockenspiel 1
Glockenspiel 2
Double Seconds (steel pan)
Desk Bells (one chromatic octave) + Swish Knocker (or Sizzle Cymbal)
Vibraphone 1
Vibraphone 2
Auxiliary Percussion (Hi-Hat, Triangle, Brake Drum, Metal Mixing Bowl)

Program Notes
Writing a work for Matt Ehlers and the McCallum High School Percussion Ensemble was an extremely personal project: as a Mac Percussion alum (class of 2013, go Knights), I reflected on my time at McCallum, and what I hold in common with the performers in today’s ensemble.

On the positive side of things, McCallum is a truly magical place, one that strongly encourages creativity and individuality. I owe a large part of my musical and personal upbringing to this culture of accepting and understanding. However, at the same time, high school is a time when young people are presented with the knowledge that the world isn’t all sunshine and rainbows; nothing illustrates this better to me than the sense of urgency with which students have addressed the issue of a rapidly changing climate.

As a response to this idea, I decided to write a piece that uses no wooden instruments, including keyboards or drum shells, and is entirely metallic. In this, A World of Our Creation is the dual world that we’re moving towards: we’ve made wonderful, creative instruments and sounds, but there may be a point at which we will only have what we’ve created, and nothing else.

As dire as that may sound, A World of Our Creation is a call for creative solutions. In presenting some of my favorite creative sounds (bowed vibes, steel pans, desk bells), I hope to encourage a sense of continued activism, constantly searching for creative solutions to those issues that we know about, and those that are to come.

– LRK