Magic

Item details

• Description +

  • Duration: 7 min.
    
    This piece is inspired by the wonderful personality and musicianship of Lynn. I recall the image of a powerful sorcerer/ess making curious shapes and colors out of simple shadows of smoke, guided by his wisdom through bursts of emotion and temperament. The musical material draws from the tune at the beginning and it ends as it began, in simplicity, with a few bubbles that disappear into the air.

• Instrumentation +

  • Marimba (5-octave)

• About the composer +

  • IVANA BILIĆ is an internationally recognised marimba virtuoso and a versatile percussion artist. She graduated percussion at the Zagreb Academy of Music (prof. Igor Lešnik).
    
    She regularly appears as soloist with European orchestras and participates on international festivals (Music Biennale Zagreb, Musicora Paris, Dubrovnik Summer Festival, Julian Rachlin & Friends, Melos Ethos Bratislava, Tempus Fugit Tel Aviv etc.) Her concert activities include recitals, crossover projects, contemporary stage productions, cd recording sessions, appearances at live tv shows and cooperation with artists and ensembles in Europe, USA and South America.
    
    Ms Bilic has received all the major Croatian performers´ awards.
    
    Since 1996. Ivana has been the solo timpanist of the Symphony Orchestra of the Croatian Radio.
    
    Ivana is on faculty at the Zagreb Academy of Music. She regularly gives marimba and percussion clinics and masterclasses in USA, South America and Europe and serves as jury member on international competitions (Marimba 2010 International Festival and Conference in Minneapolis, faculty at the Zeltsman Marimba Festival in Boston 2004, Appleton 2007 and 2009, and in Amsterdam 2010,  guest artist at the Belgium Marimba Competition and Festival 2004, appearances at PASIC 2002, 2006 and 2009, jury member at Paris and Salzburg Marimba Competitions, jury member and clinician at PAS Italy Percussion Days, guest artist and clinician at Alcoy 2007 Percussion course in Spain, Festival de marimbistas, Chiapas, Mexico 2004). In 2008, in cooperation with the Samobor Autumn Music Festival she has founded an annual marimba event called Ivana Bilic Marimba Week.
    
    Ivana performs, arranges and co-edits new works for percussion and is the author of several marimba and vibraphone solos and a duo published by Malletworks and Cantus.
    
    She took part in the huge international commissioning project of ZMF New Music for Marimba project in association with C.F. Peters as one of the few best marimbists who premiered and recorded the new works. Ivana is a Marimbaone artist with her own signature line of mallets.

• Reviews +

  • Review (Percussive Notes, May 2014)
    
    Known primarily as a player, Ivana Bilić has pushed her composition chops again to create a new, difficult work for marimba. I haven’t played everything she has written, but I have to think this is one of her more difficult works to perform. It is through composed but appears to have about five personalities. She writes that her inspiration came from Lynn Vartan and mentions an image of a powerful sorceress making shapes out of shadows of smoke with bursts of emotion. That may explain the different personalities.
    
    It starts with a beautiful chorale, then moves to two pages of “Shimmering” with fast sixteenth notes between the hands in large, chromatic intervals that sound like a roll but has you jumping and glissing all over the instrument. After a couple minutes of that, a lilting 6/8-ish “Canto” follows that is full of beautiful arpeggiations. A mixed-meter ostinato is next and looks incredibly difficult because the double verticals move once again in large, chromatic intervals. The final dance has left-hand single independent rolls in fourths accompanying a melody in octaves in the right hand. A short version of the beautiful Canto returns briefly, but with a lot more octaves and linear lines. It ends with a dissipating melody that she describes as “a few bubbles that disappear into the air.”
    
    I’m sure there will be YouTube videos of this work soon. It is a challenging piece that is woven together with a beautiful melody, and it is sure to grab the attention of advanced marimbists.
    
    —Julia Gaines

• Credits +

  • Credits Front Cover artist: Vedran Kocelj
    Front Cover graphics and layout: Ronni Kot Wenzell
    Photo: Claudia Hansen
    Engraving: Johan Svitzer
    Dedicated to Lynn Vartan
    Printed in Copenhagen, Denmark
    Copyright © Edition SVITZER
    www.editionsvitzer.com

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