Spa
wn Performers:
Tenor trombone:
1.Jessica Hawthorne
2.Steven Eckert
3.Thomas McKee
4.Ryan Smith
5.Gabriel Benitez
6.Cameron Daly
Bass trombones:
1.Wes Thompson
2.Chase Gasko
Timpani:
Matthew Flanders
Percussion:
Victor Sintchak
"SPAWN"
Program note
“Spawn” is an Etude for Trombone choir accompanied by percussion of approximately six minutes duration. The work is intended to represent some type of prehistoric reptilian creature “hatching”, “awaking” or “coming forth” into existence, to be left to the listener’s imagination. The trombones represent this in a taut motivic gesture (first appearing about a minute into the work) which gradually expands, grows and evolves; eventually taking flight in the quite demanding arpeggiated figures that end each sub-section of the piece. The percussion is used as an incubator of sorts, helping to conjure up the entity, and set it in motion at each stage of its development.
The work you are hearing tonight is in fact the second version, birth (or indeed spawning) of “Spawn”. A shorter, slightly less demanding version of the work was first written and premiered by the Frost Trombone choir in 2009. That version had a very different percussion part with very little overlap and integration into the trombone textures. Tonight’s “Spawn” is a much more raucous, ambitious and indeed “out of control” monstrosity. A work which nonetheless fully corresponds to the outline of a traditional “Sonata form” perhaps in spite of itself and while certainly maintaining its demanding Etude-like nature.