The Year of the Rabbit

A Watercolor for 3 C Flutes and Alto Flute (Second Edition)

By Daniel Dorff

Item Number: PR.114410150

ISBN 9781598065152. 9 x 12 inches.

Composed in 1999 (a arabbita year) for premiere at the Mid-Atlantic Flute Fair following the composeras trip to Taipei, The Year of the Rabbit is a scampering and colorful challenge full of rhythmic excitement, ensemble articulation, and many hints of jazz phrasings. The new edition of 2014 features re-engraved and greatly improved parts for ease of playing. For advanced performers.
PROGRAM NOTES BY THE COMPOSER In 1997 I had the fascinating experience of visiting the Taiwan Palace Museum, which holds the majority of all art collected from both Taiwan and mainland China from the past several thousand years. This six-story building rotates its display every three months, and the collection is so large that it takes about 30 years to show everything. Seeing those works displayed in June 1997, I was most taken by the many carvings dedicated to the Asian Zodiac cycle. Many artists in various media and styles have depicted the twelve-year animal cycle as a set of stylized carvings or drawings, and Iave been eager to create a musical parallel ever since this visit. In late January 1999, flutist-composer Alexandra Molnar-Suhajda asked if I had any new flute choir music that her ensemble could premiere at the Mid-Atlantic Flute Fair in February. I didnat, but it struck me that a flute choir would be good to portray the ayear of the rabbit,a which was coincidentally beginning that weekend. Within a few days the piece was started and finished. The music, in various ways, pays homage to the many aRabbitsa in my immediate family, to rabbits in general, and to the Chinese astrological sayings about people born in the year of the rabbit. THE YEAR OF THE RABBIT is dedicated to Alexandra Molnar-Suhajda, who (I later discovered) was also born in the Year of the Rabbit. NOTES ON THE 2014 EDITION The original 1999 edition of THE YEAR OF THE RABBIT was engraved hastily out of concert scheduling necessity; its lack of cues, visual clumsiness, and insufficient cautionaries, has made the music much harder to play than it actually is. This new edition is larger, better spaced, has ample cues and cautionaries, and also has a handful of minor musical revisions to help smooth performance. The composer thanks all the flutists who asked for better parts, and in particular Cindy Anne Broz and Anne Levinson of FlA>>tes de Salon, and Ellen Fisher Deerberg of the Volanti Flute Quartet, for specific suggestions leading to improved articulations and other idiomatic details.