composer



Designs for Fourteen (11 Brass and 3 Pecussionists) (1968)

 

Designs for Fourteen was composed at Tanglewood in July, 1968.  Michael Tilson Thomas conducted the premiere performance two weeks after its completion.  The instrumentation of eleven brass instruments and three percussionists provides a palette from which diverse colors and audacious events can spring.  Indeed they do.  Designs for Fourteens molders with energy; it simmers and bristles from one high voltage release to the next.  Acute virtuosity is demanded from the players if the work is to be projected as it was intended.

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Designs for Fourteen - Excerpt 1

Designs for Fourteen - Excerpt 2

Designs for Fourteen - Excerpt 3

Designs for Fourteen - Excerpt 4

Designs for Fourteen - Excerpt 5

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Publisher: C. F. Peters

 

Duration: 10 minutes

 

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Program note:

Michael Golff, reviewing one of the Composers and Choreographers Theatre programs from the 1974 season wrote:  “The Composers Brass Orchestra, conducted by Robert Levy, was, as they say, a barn-burner. . . .  Jere Hutcheson’s “Designs for Fourteen,’ which has designs all right – a big, splashy piece that seems to exploit every device known to brass-playing.  I reveled in one section in particular where the ensemble is doing microtonal glisses all over the place while the percussionists are getting their riffs off in wild abandon.  This is the kind of piece everybody should hear at least once (for the sheer hell of it), maybe even twice (to see if those “hair-raising” nervous thrills are still there).  I must say that I admire the resourcefulness of the composer who can orchestrate such off-beat concatenations of sounds while daring musicians notto be totally involved.”

Designs for Fourteen received numerous performances in the first five years following its composition. In a way, my experience with Designs whetted my appetite for the larger wind ensembles, and in 1972 I penned my first essay for the full symphonic band.

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