Preview: Duo Mpingo
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SKU: A0.1028053
Composed by Sarah Hersh. 20th Century,Contemporary. 14 pages. Burbury Lane Music #4276953. Published by Burbury Lane Music (A0.1028053)."No clarinet duet has made me stop in rehearsal and just smile so much from how cool things sounded." - Marcus Moore, clarinetist on Duo Mpingo
Duo Mpingo is an approximately 6 minute crowd pleaser that is perfect for any occasion. It is a modern but accessible piece that is loosely based on the lifecycle of a mpingo, or African blackwood, tree. It is a relatively advanced piece but could be performed by advanced level students. Duo Mpingo can be programmed equally well on environmental-themed or any other type of concert.
Program Note: When I began to research the mpingo (African blackwood) tree in preparation for writing this piece, I came to learn that it is a fascinating tree. It has the ability to survive fires, it does not reach maturity for about 70 – 100 years, and it improves soil fertility. However, it is endangered in several African countries due to illegal logging and over-harvesting, in part because of its beautiful dark heartwood. The outside of the mpingo tree looks like any other tree with a light brown color; the inside, however, is a gorgeous, dark brown-black color – a color you have seen if you’ve ever seen a clarinet, as clarinets, along with other western instruments, are made out of the dark heartwood of the mpingo tree. I had never stopped to think about why wooden clarinets have such a dark color instead of what one typically thinks of as a wood color. I was astonished by the hidden beauty of this tree and what secrets lay inside.
Duo Mpingo is somewhat programmatic in that it loosely chronicles the imagined life of a mpingo tree. There is a short section close to the middle of the piece (the "inner" part of the piece, if you will) that is meant to evoke the beautiful, mysterious, endangered dark heartwood of the mpingo tree. The direction to the performers for this section is "solemn, prayer-like, reverential", which is how I feel we should look at every tree – not as something in our way that needs to be cut down, but with reverence for the amazing living things they are.
Duo Mpingo was commissioned and premiered by Daraja Music Initiative and Clarinets for Conservation to promote a sustainable planet. This recording is by members of Terminus Ensemble, Marcus Moore and Lauren Murphy. To hear the entire piece, please visit www.sarahhersh.com.
The composer is a member of ASCAP and may be reached at www.sarahhersh.com or sarahhershcomposer@gmail.com.
This product was created by a member of ArrangeMe, Hal Leonard’s global self-publishing community of independent composers, arrangers, and songwriters. ArrangeMe allows for the publication of unique arrangements of both popular titles and original compositions from a wide variety of voices and backgrounds.
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