By James Dever jamesdever Bandcamp tylerdever Bandcamp jamesdevermusic SoundCloud jamzdenver Twitter.
Cover art by James Dever jamesdever Bandcamp tylerdever Bandcamp jamesdevermusic SoundCloud jamzdenver Twitter.
Released 6/6/2016.
Duration: 5:12.

Listen on SoundCloud or YouTube.

Read artist commentary.

Contributors:

• Breana Meyers (performance)

Artist commentary:

James Dever: (SoundCloud description)

unrequited was composed in the latter half of 2015 under a different name. It is for solo five octave marimba and is the first of two planned movements.

The premiere of the work was performed at the University of Northern Colorado in April of 2016 by Breana Meyers.

James Dever: (YouTube description)

First: Apologies for the phone quality and especially for me accidentally kicking the stand and dropping the phone early on! My camera power supply died and this was my only solution! Higher quality audio (where the cell phone drop is much less jarring) is available on my Soundcloud page here.

Premiere performance from my senior recital on April 28th, 2016 at UNC's Frasier Hall. Thanks to Breana Meyers for the great performance!

unrequited was created from my absolute love of the marimba. It is without a doubt my absolute favorite instrument to play. The range, the tone, the timbre, everything about it sings to me. I've wanted to write for it for a very long time but always held myself back by fears of not being good enough as a performer/composer for the instrument.

Eventually I decided I couldn't be afraid forever and set out to write a piece. I chose to be significantly more traditional in my tonality in this piece for a lot of background reasons surrounding the piece. The piece explores multiple different melodies that never quite fully become fleshed out, constantly getting in each other's way. A series of stray paths and half concepts that never fully are realized.

Thank you for listening.