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Giraffe Study is a fantasy response to a fascinating track on Clark Wheeler’s revelatory CD of field recordings of the music of the Bushmen of Botswana. This track on the “When We Were Free” CD is a hypnotic performance of the song called Qdwa (“The Giraffe”) as sung and played on the “thumb piano” by Xashe Xishe, one of the oldest dwellers of his village. His singing and the gamelan-like collection of pitches and sounds resonating from his “dengo” (placed on a coffee can) mystified and mesmerized me. Capturing this kaleidoscopic mixing of timbres, the magical mantras of irregular patterns, and the aching loneliness of the old man’s voice seemed an appropriate study to engage the superb skills and adventuresome imagination of marimbist Payton MacDonald. The score asks for four mallets composed of extremely different materials to create a heterogeneous panoply of timbres, and the rhythmic and dynamic deployment of these is notated in the first minute of the piece in a precisely erratic way. Once this sound world has been established, the marimbist is free to apply similar timbral disjunction for the remainder of the piece, employing various kinds and degrees of improvisation related to the notated patterns, melodic shapes and cadenza breaks which form the narrative shape of the work. -Don Freund

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from Explorations 5 (commissions), released October 15, 2020
Composed by Don Freund
Performed, recorded, edited, mixed, mastered by Payton MacDonald

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Payton MacDonald's Explorations Wayne, New Jersey

Explorations is Payton MacDonald's series where he explores every possible avenue of sonic expression, mostly centered around marimba, with electronics, collaborations and solo recordings. Good headphones are recommended.

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