Update Title: 39847BF3-115C-4C1A-AAA8-C6356E1C50E9

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"...Billy Jean [King] comes on next. She is the soloist in Gwyneth Walker's brief, delightful Match Point, a four-minute evocation of a tennis match.

Walker, who lives and works in a studio on the Braintree Dairy Farm near Randolph, Vt., was herself a competitive tennis player. 'Billie Jean was my idol,' she says. 'So you can imagine how exciting it is that she's performing in a piece of mine.'

While waiting to go on, Billie Jean goes over her cues, checks her inventory of tennis racquet, balls and other paraphernalia and said, In response to a question from an onlooker, 'This is tougher than Bobby Riggs. At least then I was doing something that I was supposed to know how to do.'

As the young athletes prepare to enter, she gives two of them a quick lesson on how to bounce a tennis ball off a racket properly. She exhorts others ('Don't forget your props, kids,') and she paces a little saying, 'they's laugh when I make mistakes because it will make the whole thing seem more human to them.'

Now is her turn. She and conductor Anagnost come on stage carrying tennis equipment. Billie Jean goes over to the podium and 'tunes up' her racket as if it were a Stradivarius, which, in her career, it was. She tells Anagnost they have to warm up and she encourages him to touch his toes.

Then Billie Jean heads for the timpani and begins to drop yellow tennis balls onto the drums. As the music begins, the strings will simulate forehand and backhand with their bows, and the brass will use colored tennis balls an mutes.

Anagnost exchanges his baton for a tennis racket and 'the point' is played. He and Billie Jean rally to the accompaniment of tongue clicks and cheek pops from the musicians which suggests the sound of racket hitting balls. After returning a lob, she end the point with an overhead smash that is strong enough to rustle music pages on the stands of the nearby cellists.
 
The match is over, a trophy is presented -- an oversized yellow tennis ball. Billie Jean returns to the timpani and bounces the big yellow ball off the drums in response to Anagnost's downbeats. There is a concluding toast and the mock heroics of Walker's score are over." 
--Robert Kimball, New York Post

"I love it! Actual enjoyment in the concert hall, and the music was good! This is wonderful fun!" --the Panel of Judges, Composers Guild National Competition 1987 (upon awarding Match Point First Prize, Instrumental Category)

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