Word: kissels
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...scores with the word "viola" exceeds the maximum number of items the system can display. Certainly this seems an injustice. The only excuse is the youth of the marimba, first manufactured in its modern form in 1910. The viola, comparatively, seems to have been around forever. Mary E. Kissel's solo marimba recital, heralded as the first solo marimba recital ever given in Adams House, managed to succeed in making a contemporary instrument, and contemporary music, both fascinating and accessible...
...answer is not the relatively conservative program, but rather Kissel's superb performance. Except for the occasional click of her mallets, the performance was nearly flawless. Kissel reminds us of what we value in virtuosity: not the complexity of the music, but the effortlessness with which that music is executed...
...program alternated between works by Japanese and American composers, more than half of which, including the piece by Kissel herself, were written by women. Such new music for a relatively new instrument creates an interesting circumstance for most audiences: expectation defined by the instrument itself, rather than a repertoire of standard works or recordings of well known performers. In many ways, the marimba is a very limited instrument. The wood bars that generate the sound make subtle fluctuations of pitch (vibrato) impossible. The metal tubes under each bar--the resonators--provide only a few seconds worth of audible sustain...
Sharon Smith's Reverence, with Kissel's delicate and sweet rendering of melody, illustrated just how surmountable these limits are. Keiko Abe's Memories of the Seashore provides another example, a fittingly nostalgic melody in the lower register performed with great sensitivity to contour and phrasing. Kissel's treatment of dynamics, here and elsewhere, added much to the emotive character of these works...
...Kissel's own Reflections of Us, introduced as "short, but says what I want to say," was indeed just that, a brief, meditative piece dominated by a single, poignant melody. Predominantly homophonic, registral spacing and changes in tempo demarcated the basic two-part form. Though perhaps a bit too short and lacking development, the B-1work succeeded in conveying a strong sentiment, proving again the expressive capacity of the instrument...