“Dear Charlie”: A Collection of Songs for Marimba and Voice

At its core, Music can be described as a form of communication; of what we cannot achieve only through speech. By intertwining melody and the human voice, we are able to attain a level of personal expression that transcends gender, age, race, social class, and more. By contrast, music can also be meaningless; an exercise of learned muscle memory through repetition, void of emotion. The music in the marimba world has strayed dangerously close to the latter by creating a trend of music that is technically demanding, time consuming, and largely unpalatable for the audience, isolating the instrument to chamber halls and jury rooms. I have written a collection of six pieces for marimba and voice, drawing on techniques in the song writing tradition in an attempt to bring the marimba to a new genre. By using the marimba as a singer-songwriter tool, we can introduce the instrument to a mainstream market, helping create more performance and occupational opportunities, and shedding light on this wonderful instrument.https://remix.berklee.edu/graduate-studies-contemporary-performance/1126/thumbnail.jp