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The marimba is one of the most popular instruments in the Caribbean Islands. The performance of Caribbean music often features multiple players on a single marimba. Such is the case in Brian Slawson's The Three Buccaneers. Three players share one standard, 4.3-octave (low A) marimba to create a playful musical ride!
This piece comes as a professionally printed and bound score and includes individual parts in PDF format for printing or for tablet viewing.
Scored for three players, or according to Brian Slawson, “three buccaneers” on one low-A marimba, this tune opens in a hearty “Pirate 3” with a canon setting of what sounds like a typical sea shanty. As the eight-measure melody is repeated, additional voices layer over top with slight variations before the piece shifts to 12/8 and a more fluid arpeggio-based section. In this second half, the third marimba part takes a much less active bass-line role as compared to the more active upper voices. With a brief, five-measure coda, the piece concludes with a fleeting reference to the earlier feel.
The Three Buccaneers is short (just over two minutes) and very accessible to younger players with only a few double-stop rolled passages (at slower tempos), all keyboard parts playable with two mallets throughout, and only an occasional leading-tone C-sharp accidental departing from the D-minor key signature. This work isn’t as flashy or technically impressive as other pieces scored for this “3-on-1” instrumentation, but as an accessible work for less advanced players, it certainly has some entertainment value in performance and is open to some very obvious costuming if the players feel compelled.
—Josh Gottry
Percussive Notes
Vol. 54, No. 5, November 2016
The marimba is one of the most popular instruments in the Caribbean Islands. The performance of Caribbean music often features multiple players on a single marimba. Such is the case in Brian Slawson's The Three Buccaneers. Three players share one standard, 4.3-octave (low A) marimba to create a playful musical ride!
This piece comes as a professionally printed and bound score and includes individual parts in PDF format for printing or for tablet viewing.
Scored for three players, or according to Brian Slawson, “three buccaneers” on one low-A marimba, this tune opens in a hearty “Pirate 3” with a canon setting of what sounds like a typical sea shanty. As the eight-measure melody is repeated, additional voices layer over top with slight variations before the piece shifts to 12/8 and a more fluid arpeggio-based section. In this second half, the third marimba part takes a much less active bass-line role as compared to the more active upper voices. With a brief, five-measure coda, the piece concludes with a fleeting reference to the earlier feel.
The Three Buccaneers is short (just over two minutes) and very accessible to younger players with only a few double-stop rolled passages (at slower tempos), all keyboard parts playable with two mallets throughout, and only an occasional leading-tone C-sharp accidental departing from the D-minor key signature. This work isn’t as flashy or technically impressive as other pieces scored for this “3-on-1” instrumentation, but as an accessible work for less advanced players, it certainly has some entertainment value in performance and is open to some very obvious costuming if the players feel compelled.
—Josh Gottry
Percussive Notes
Vol. 54, No. 5, November 2016
