Fanfares

Fanfares are curious musical creations: as prelude to presumably more important events, they purposefully call attention to the business at hand; yet in doing so, they call plenty of attention to themselves. Short, fast, loud, to the point – they get the work done. The business at hand in this piece is the act of performance itself – or, rather, the physical act of actually playing the instrument. The performer isn't so much playing music as they are hitting the marimba, trying to defeat his own physical limits. By pushing the performer past the edge of fatigue, this short piece suffers under the weight of its own objective. And so, too, might the audience. ~N.T. Fanfares was premiered by Matthew Coley at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, April of 2014.