Dimensión [trombone octet]
Chamber Orchestra - Digital Sheet Music

Chamber Orchestra - Level 4 - Digital Download

SKU: A0.596522

Composed by Juan María Solare. 20th Century,Contemporary,Jazz,Latin,Standards. Score and parts. 32 pages. Juan Maria Solare #3570249. Published by Juan Maria Solare (A0.596522).

Dimensión is a tango that was composed based on two simple piano pieces destined to young pianists: the first theme is "Langostango" and the second one "Continuando". When joining to build up "Dimensión", additional elements came into the game, such as an important secondary melody and a few transitions.

Dimensión is therefore a clear example of a successful composition: a couple of good ideas and a lot of work to achieve that nobody notices how much work lies behind it. 

About the title, it obeys to my (slightly excessive) concern towards finding names that can be understood in any language of the places I usually am related to (i.e. in Spanish, English and German). In the case of "dimensión" it is a transparent word, understanding as such the words that are practically identical in any language while keeping their meaning (there exist words that are quite similar in different languages, but mean different things, in Linguistics these are called false friends.) Among my titles one finds several of such transparent words.

In September 2002 I began to conduct the Orquesta No Típica at the University of Bremen, Germany, a chamber group of variable instrumentation devoted to tango music. Dimensión was the first piece that I composed especially for this group, in January / February 2003. The original version of Dimensión is therefore for Sextet: flute, clarinet, violin, guitar, bass, piano.

Since that first version (performed several times in Germany and Argentina) I wrote a long dozen of arrangements for different instrumental groups.

Dimensión for trombone octet: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8Uq4_PSlPI

Dimensión, in its version for trombone octet, was awarded second prize in the competition Trombonanza 2015 (Argentina). The jury had eight members (some from Latin America, others from USA). Members of the jury were: Fernando Deddos (Brasil), Irvin Wagner (USA), Giovanni Scarpetta (Colombia), György Gyivicsan (Hungary), Paul Compton (USA), Pablo Fenoglio (Argentina), Miguel Sanchez (Venezuela), Matthew Murchison (USA) and Francisco Alaniz (Chile).

It is extremely interesting to read their eight feedbacks about this piece and how they saw this piece so differently:

1) Interesting composition. Some difficult range issues. And the piece does not seem to go anywhere nor reach any conclusive direction. It has the same ideas and texture throughout.

2) Good melodic and rhythmic ideas and good use of all 8 trombones. Tenor ranges are good, but I would like to see the bass trombone more in lower range.

3) Obra muy bien logrda un 6/8 hermoso, pasando por todas las voces y registros, 4/4 tranquilo sin mayores complicaciones y fácil de apreciar y en el 8/8 me encanto esa tensión fuerza y color.

4) The name fits with the piece since the overall tempo is not altered, bringing to the listener the impression of one specific "dimension" even with the contrasting tonalities (minorXmajor). I believe some of the high range parts that are in accompaniment and harmonic function, in a live performance, can be extremely hard for the intended effect (ex: m. 14-18…etc). One can see that the idea is to have a constant (simplist) rhythm as an accompaniment, but I believe the parts that are accompanying could have more expression. Good themes! I miss a "particular language", it really reminds me Piazzolla in a lot of parts, but it maybe should bring new information along with the intended mood? Congrats and thanks for writing for the low brass.

5) Esta bien escrita, los registros están muy bien