The 21st-Century Canadian Snare Drum

Composer: Kati Agócs  (CA) 9'

FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) is a work for solo percussion nine minutes in duration. Scored for solo snare drum, kick drum, and two large metal plates, it features solo snare drum playing while extending the timbres around it. In FOMO, the soloist enacts a kind of stream-of-conscious pantomime, searching for something inchoate, elusive, and potentially unreachable. Musically, a dialectic of elements keeps shifting; visceral contrasts in timbre and mercurial changes in mood are contrasted with more spacious, mysterious areas. The overall form is a continuous, if circuitous, zigzag buildup to the end, where things finally lock in and activate. FOMO was commissioned by Ryan Scott (Toronto, Canada) for his 21stC Canadian Snare Drum Project, with support from the Canada Council for the Arts. 

Composer: Brian Current (CA) 9'

Infantry intertwines the snare drum's military origins with authentic narratives from real soldiers. The term "Infantry," which is still employed today, carries a demeaning connotation, originating from the Latin word 'infans,' denoting 'speechless,' 'newborn,' or 'foolish.'

The snare drum, present during the battlefield carnage from the Middle Ages up until the invention of the radio, was used to signal troop movements on the field, where the violence was too noisy for the use of shouted instructions.

In Infantry, the live percussionist performs alongside spoken texts by soldiers from different backgrounds and time periods who relate their experiences through interviews or historical letters read by voice actors.  The speech rhythms of these texts are notated and performed by the live performer alongside the actual audio.

The speakers include a drum instructor whose text originates from "The Art of Beating the Drum” (1817), Private James Wilson who wrote a letter after the Battle of Waterloo, Lieutenant John Freeman Shorter, a free African American wounded in the Battle of Honey Hill during the US Civil War, Private George Stonefish from the Delaware First Nation (Ontario) recounting the Battle of Ypres in World War I, Christina Tremblay, a 1st Lieutenant in the Army National Guard, Shirley Wu, a Staff Sergeant in the US Army, Raquel Patrick, a Chief Warrant Officer 4 in the US Army, and Frank DeVita, an American WWII veteran sharing his experience on Omaha Beach.

Composer: Russell Hartenberger (CA) 13'

Arlington is for solo snare drum with percussion ensemble accompaniment. The piece is framed around two rhythms that are used in combination with one another. One is a drum beating that is played in funerals at Arlington National Cemetery and was played at the funeral of President John F. Kennedy. The second outlines the rhythm of a drum beating that was performed as an invocation at the opening of the World Drums concerts at Expo 86 in Vancouver by First Nations drummer Marc Aliskaswa. 

The snare drum part also incorporates timeline patterns from West African drum ensemble music as well as traditional North American rudimental drumming styles. There is a concept in West African music called melorhythm in which rhythms suggest melodies; this is how many of the melodic figures in Arlington are derived. Some of the other melodic and harmonic elements are references to music by J. S. Bach and Steve Reich. 

Arlington was commissioned by Ryan Scott as part of his 21stC Canadian Snare Drum project.  

Note: this work was released on a separate recording - LISTEN HERE

Composer: Anna Höstman (CA) 6'

 "A clean and smooth, dark-pebbled beach went all around the bay, the tide line marked with driftwood, gleaming, bleached bones of trees, fantastic roots and worn and shredded trunks. Above the beach a band of brilliant green and then the deep, black spaces of the forest. " — Rockwell Kent, from Wilderness: A Journal of Quiet Adventure in Alaska 1918/19 

Composer: Nicole Lizée (CA) 7'

Pump Up the Volume was a film I watched multiple times as a teen in 1990. The premise centres around a teenager who hosts his own pirate radio station using a shortwave radio secretly in his parents’ basement to reach other disaffected teens. He remains anonymous - using a pseudonym and a filter to disguise his voice - until the very end of the film when his identity is revealed. 

Through monologues and diverse, non-mainstream music he expresses his anti-establishment, anti-authoritarian, anti-conformist views and calls out the corruption in his high school. This movie arrived at the right time for me as I was searching for an alternate means of expression - a counterculture - both philosophically and musically. During the writing of The Far Night.fm, I had recently rediscovered the film while listening to an in-depth podcast analysis of it and watching an upload of it online (ironically, having to search quite hard to find it as the film is no longer available due to music licensing issues). 

As I was watching the film over 30 years later I found myself still drawn to a time where radio could reach people so profoundly. There is something moving about a group of people gathering secretly late at night in abandoned parking lots to tune into a DJ; listening for ‘truths’ and 

guidance interspersed between playlists - where Bad Brains, Pixies, and Leonard Cohen could co-exist. One knew that the music was as important as the rants. And the playlists were meticulously chosen. Certain genres of music in 1990 - those I was tuned into - were political and polemical.    

This piece is a kind of love letter to that time - and to that feeling; to the collective experience of listening in secret. What better way to express this than using snare drum - featuring gravity beats over faded, hazy snippets of verses with the lyrics “Let’s go down to Snare Hill.”

Dedicated to Ryan Scott, one of my favourite musicians ever.

Composer: Monica Pearce (CA) 6'

Time and effort is a method for documenting a person’s time of actual time spent on activities within a specified time period. Submitted in writing to be certified, time and effort provides official documentation of time spent on all activities. time & effort was commissioned by Ryan Scott with support from the Canada Council for the Arts. 

Composer: Andrew Staniland (CA) 7'

This piece is my 2nd work for snare drum and electronics, the first being perhaps my most performed and representative work Orion Constellation Theory. Both works are written for Ryan Scott, a long-time musical collaborator. Writing for the snare drum is difficult for the simple reason that it is exposed, both for the performer and the composer.  In writing the work, I first had to face the problem of Orion as it is so emblematic of my approach to mixing acoustic and electronic sounds. It was important to escape the gravity of previous notions and do something fresh, innovative, and with the right amount of technical challenge, all without repeating myself. Further, I wanted to write a piece that fit the traditional notions of rudiments while at the same time pushing the technique into some uncharted territory, all while providing a satisfying challenge to an advanced technique-savvy percussionist. 

Formally, and a nod to the title (which is, incidentally, the name of a synthesizer patch used in the electronics), The work is quasi-palindromic, as though it gets turned upside down at mid point, switching hands where everything that was left in the first half becomes right and in the latter half, and vice versa. The symmetry is interestingly not really perceptible, as the electronics do not follow suit. There are a few subtle  ‘easter eggs’ brought in from Orion in the electronics track, for the aficionados out there. 

Thanks to Ryan Scott and the Canada Council.

Composer: Christina Volpini (CA) 8'

This piece explores my interest in the drum as a resonant body, and in particular, the ways that snares can amplify beating patterns to augment rhythms emerging from the drum itself. The piece is designed as a set of proposals that require the performer’s response to each listening situation. At the heart of the work is a search for sonic artefacts that may emerge from a confluence of sounds (the ‘ghosts’ of the title). Through this acoustic exploration, the performer is asked to become a listener in the same way as all others in the space. 

My sincere thanks to Ryan Scott for his generosity in workshopping and contributing to the development of this work.