Cadence: Fantasy on Rhythms of Nick Angelis

In 1995 I met percussionist Nick Angelis while I was a member of the Blue Knights Drum & Bugle Corps from Denver, Colorado. Nick was a snare drum player who ranked as the top solo marching snare performer for many years. In 2009 I was commissioned by Don Lefevre to write a work for the West Texas A&M University Symphonic Band. I conceived of a piece that would showcase the band’s rhythmic nature by combining Nick’s rapid fire rhythms (designed for percussion) and re-imagining them as notes on instruments. These rhythms of the original cadence statement, which were the first written notes of the composition, are presented in the last third of the piece. After writing the ending, I worked backwards writing the material that would logically lead to the work¹s climax. The piece is mostly octatonic throughout, with a few elaborations on some of the melodic content in the middle section.

Cadence was recently selected as one of six winners in the Texas Composers Competition, included in the book Contemporary Art Music in Texas, and performed by Croation Army Wind Symphony at the International Society for Contemporary Music, World New Music Days in Zagreb.

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