Update Title: ED9C0A43-F84B-40F4-8BD7-52F0ECCAF1B4

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The Concerto for Piano and Wind Ensemble is the result of two motivating factors: a commission by the late Robert Wojciak for a piece to be premiered by the University of Southern California Wind Ensemble, and the desire to write a concerto for my wife, Vicki Ray.  The piece is in three movements, played without a pause.  The movement titles ("intolerant brightness," "one pierced moment," and "the genuine apparition") came from poems by e. e. cummings, and the general character of each movement reflects its poetic fragment.  In addition to the solo piano, I make use of a concertino group of mallet instruments and double bass, and I explore several ways of combining and opposing the forces at hand.  The pitch material was generated (in the time-honored tradition) from Vicki's last name, and its working out was inspired by her pianism.  This 6-note motto (D-A-E-Eb-Bb-F) is most clearly presented at the outset, and it recurs in various guises many times during the course of the piece.  The Concerto was completed in December 1988, and first performed in March 1989, with Vicki Ray as soloist. --Donald Crockett

If you are the director of a large, professional-caliber wind ensemble, know a wonderful pianist who owes you a favor and are in search of a challenging, impressive new composition for your next concert read on.  Donald Crockett's seventeen-minute Concerto for Piano and Wind Ensemble...may be your next showstopper.  Though all these instrumentalists have melodically and rhythmically engaging things to do throughout the piece, the pianist remains the star, a lyricist in the middle of the work and rhythmically jabbing virtuoso at the beginning and end.

The work is cast in three attacca sections, each with a suggestive superscription: "Intolerant brightness," during which sharp attacks bounce like sun rays; "one pierced moment," a rhapsodic piano solo that, as other instruments gradually join in, builds to a tremendous climax; and "The genuine apparition," a fey vision of cubist funk.  Behind it all, you may discern such disparate influences as Ravel's piano concertos, Keith Jarrets' wandering improvisations and the limpid sonorities of Copland and Stravinsky.  In the livelier passages, pianist and ensemble engage in animated, syncopated blips of sixteenth-note hocket.  Here, the keyboardist generally uses bright polychords.  Other pianistic textures include the nearly ubiquitous contemporary technique of rapid, angular runs (like the computer melody played when the Jeopardy board lights up, only faster) and measured left-hand scales with accented right-hand chords.  Through it all, however, clear tonal centers remain.

While this is a difficult work--requiring a conductor who can negotiate an occasionally rapid exchange of meters like 3/4, 10/16 and 5/8, and players who know which sixteenth or eighth note to come in on--it is not as hard as many other (well-nigh unplayable) works today.  Given individual preparation beforehand, a few sectional rehearsals and about six full rehearsals, a thrilling performance can ensue.  The pianist may even thank you.  --John Salmon, Greensboro, North Carolina. In American Music Teacher, October/November, 1995.

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