Duo Duel

	Duo Duel ''Duo Duel'' is a concerto for two percussionists and orchestra written in 2020 by the American composer Jennifer Higdon. The work was commissioned by the Houston Symphony for the percussionists Svet Stoyanov and Matthew Strauss, to whom it is dedicated. Its world premiere was given by Stoyanov, Strauss, and the Houston Symphony conducted by Robert Spano at Jones Hall, Houston, on May 6, 2022. Composition ''Duo Duel'' was written between February 2020 and its completion on June 11, 2020. The concerto is cast in one continuous movement divided into three sections in the traditional fast–slow–fast form and lasts about 24 minutes. Instrumentation The work is scored for two soli percussionists and an orchestra comprising two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, three trumpets, two trombones, bass trombone, tuba, timpani, one additional percussionist, harp, and strings. The soli percussion battery comprises only pitched percussion and consists of a shared vib ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu]
picture info	Jennifer Higdon Jennifer Elaine Higdon (born December 31, 1962) is an American composer of contemporary classical music. She has received many awards, including the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Music for her Violin Concerto and three Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Classical Composition for her Percussion Concerto in 2010, Viola Concerto in 2018, and Harp Concerto in 2020. Elected a Member of the American Philosophical Society in 2019, she was a professor of composition at the Curtis Institute of Music from 1994 to 2021. Biography Higdon was born in Brooklyn, New York. She spent the first 10 years of her life in Atlanta, Georgia before moving to Seymour, Tennessee. Her father, Charles Higdon, was a painter and made efforts to expose his children to different types of art. He took them to various exhibitions of new and experimental art that gave her her earliest exposure to art and helped her to form an idea of what art was. She also developed an interest in photography and writing at an early age ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu]
picture info	Timpani Timpani (; ) or kettledrums (also informally called timps) are musical instruments in the percussion family. A type of drum categorised as a hemispherical drum, they consist of a membrane called a head stretched over a large bowl traditionally made of copper. Thus timpani are an example of kettle drums, also known as vessel drums and semispherical drums, whose body is similar to a section of a sphere whose cut conforms the head. Most modern timpani are ''pedal timpani'' and can be tuned quickly and accurately to specific pitches by skilled players through the use of a movable foot-pedal. They are played by striking the head with a specialized drum stick called a ''timpani stick'' or ''timpani mallet''. Timpani evolved from military drums to become a staple of the classical orchestra by the last third of the 18th century. Today, they are used in many types of ensembles, including concert bands, marching bands, orchestras, and even in some rock bands. ''Timpani'' is an Italian ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu]
picture info	Percussion Concertos A percussion instrument is a musical instrument that is sounded by being struck or scraped by a beater including attached or enclosed beaters or rattles struck, scraped or rubbed by hand or struck against another similar instrument. Excluding zoomusicological instruments and the human voice, the percussion family is believed to include the oldest musical instruments.''The Oxford Companion to Music'', 10th edition, p.775, In spite of being a very common term to designate instruments, and to relate them to their players, the percussionists, percussion is not a systematic classificatory category of instruments, as described by the scientific field of organology. It is shown below that percussion instruments may belong to the organological classes of ideophone, membranophone, aerophone and cordophone. The percussion section of an orchestra most commonly contains instruments such as the timpani, snare drum, bass drum, tambourine, belonging to the membranophones, and cymbals ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu]