The Spring Gala Concert, Featuring the USA Percussion Ensemble, USA Essay

The Spring Gala Concert, Featuring the USA Percussion Ensemble, USA Steel, and the World Music Group - Essay Example This paper illustrates that the opening piece in the Spring Gala Concert was David Skidmore’s ‘Unknown Kind’. Skidmore is a relatively young composer having been born in 1982. Still, his compositions have been regularly performed around the country and at universities. His composition ‘Unknown Kind’ was originally performed at Carnegie Hall in 2007. While the author enjoyed the composition itself it ran counter to many of my expectations. The researcher had been expecting something more along the lines of traditional classical music, but the composition was slightly minimal and experimental. Still, it set a unique tone for the rest of the concert, as the rest of the compositions continued a slightly experimental theme. The ‘Unknown Kind’ composition was followed by a performance of Shostakovich’s ‘intermezzo’. This work fell along more traditional classical lines. This was perhaps the piece the author enjoyed the most as it balanced these classical elements with a sort of offbeat tone. David Maslanka’s ‘Crown of Thorns’ followed this piece. This was a highly minimal piece and during the performance, the author witnessed a young child dozing to sleep. The researcher didn’t share the child’s boredom, however, and after a period he came to appreciate the eccentricities in the work, as they offered an escape from run-of-the-mill type tonality. The intermission followed the conclusion of this piece.