ay marimba

Many years ago, when both Sir Arthur and Mr Spiggott were doing our undergraduate work in the Greater New York area (Mr Spiggott at Columbia and Sir Arthur....ahem elsewhere), I went to Manhattan to visit Mr. Spiggott. We were to go to Juilliard to watch the Juilliard orchestra perform one of their numerous concerts. The soloist was to be a marimba player. Now as musicians we know there are VERY few CLASSICAL pieces for the marimba. As a jazz instrument its cousin the vibraphone has a much bigger range and for me the timbre of the instrument is much BETTER suited to the jazz idiom.

So it was that we would be listening to, for the umpteenth millionth time, the Paul Creston Marimba Concerto.

I looked it up, the year was 1993 and since then i have still heard no other marimba concerto OTHER than the Paul Creston.

So it came as a surprise when I saw the following link on Youtube:



Certainly this young lady does a GREAT job trying to convey the spirit of the piece, however it is hard for me to take seriously the repeated notes.

It does however work better on the accordion:



I have come to be good friends with a number of REALLY great accordion players and have heard them play mozart sonatas, Bach Chaconne all manner of crazy things on their instrument.

As a violinist I do love transcriptions, but please tell the marimba players to stick to the creston and let the transcribing to the accordion players or the Yamaha Electone



I think I want to hire this lady to accompany me the next time I want to play a concerto