Chasing Windmills

This is the opening to my piece Chasing Windmills for solo Vibraphone.

I started playing Vibes in 1976.

There was very little published music for the instrument at that time.

Even fewer teachers.

For an instrument developed in the 1930's - that makes sense.

Technique books by Ron Delp and Gary Burton and the Goldstein book of scales were what I learned from.

Bill Molenhof's Music of the Day for solo vibes was soon to be new in 1978,

and revolutionary in the technique he imparted on each of his compositions.

I was attracted to that, and after learning that whole book, I started composing for the instrument myself. I published this in 1997 and the whole piece is about 8 minutes long. There's all kinds of techniques I use - mallet independence, dampening and pedaling. Compositionally it moves through 3 different sections.

It's one of my favorite pieces to teach to students.