Jeff Zahos

During the Spring 2009 semester, Italian composer Girolamo Deraco was in residence at Truman State University.  I had the great privilege of performing on the premiere of two of his pieces (Nebula Picta for four players on one marimba and Little Puppets’ Symphony) and commissioning him to write a work for solo timpani (Thou for solo timpano).

Below you will see video of the premiere performance of his Little Puppets’ Symphony, a chamber work involving collaboration between music, dance and theatre, a feature of many of Deraco’s works.

The piece offers a peak in to the mysterious (and sometimes absurd!) process of creative invention, and is a bit of a wink of the eye in self-acknowledgement  of the composer’s own eccentricity.

embedded by Embedded Video

embedded by Embedded Video

Last year, my friend James brought up the idea of building woodblocks specifically for Iannis Xenakis’s Rebonds.  Here’s what we came up with:

embedded by Embedded Video

That’s my friend from Truman State University, Scott Quade performing on a set we made.  Scott, like many others at the school, is a fantastic percussionist.

Anyway, James had some sketches of a set of blocks which belonged to a former teacher.  Along with this, Kolberg makes “Power Blocks”, which are often used for the piece.  There is a great video of percussionist Pedro Carniero playing Rebonds B.  Carniero’s blocks are cool, but of course I’m partial to “XenakibloX”!

…next up will be designing and building a mounting system for the blocks.