I am excited to share this album of percussion music-a collection that gave me the opportunity for musical exploration and personal growth . Each work represents a different challenge for the performer . Chris Paul Harman's Verve examines the limitations of the marimba's resonance and answers with a work using reverb effects for a lush-sounding instrument. Valerio Sannicandro's Distentio looks at the same issue of resonance using the vibraphone-by playing with dampening, pedaling, and varied attacks, we begin to hear the permutations of the resonance from the vibraphone's inner world . Roger Reynolds' Autumn Island examines the marimba with a different approach-using ornaments and silence, the piece embraces space and fragmented musical gestures to construct larger musical phrases. The challenges posed in lnouk Demers' Desastre concern the selection of sounds and how these sounds cohere to make a whole. James Wood's Rogosanti presents the opportunity to cement my view on multi-percussion-more precisely, how to construct and embody a percussion setup. Building a brand-new instrument with each multi-percussion work presents a window of opportunity to underscore the sound of a percussionist with the considerations of aesthetics, instruments, and the performing body. Each work creates a universe of its own. Finally, Chris Mercer's Concerto Chamber answers the challenges posed by Demers and Wood with a post-percussion proposition, using a prepared guitar as a percussion instrument! Its unassuming elegance and potential as a percussion source opens our imagination for future directions .

​

-Aiyun Huang, 2021