Tafate

Item details

• Description +

  • Duration: 8 min.
    
    This piece started as an improvisation.  I was exploring the folk heritage of my homeland and looking for some simple tunes to improvise on. Although our music is strongly rhythmical and rich with dances and storytelling there is no particular percussion instrument except for occasional rattles and funny noise makers... Still, many of the folk string instruments use repeating notes, rhythmical writing and patterns that are similar to the ones we use in percussion music. And the marimba with its warm and mellow, yet rhythmical and hypnotic sound was the ideal playground for variation and interpretation of those basic sonorities. There is also the tradition of melisms and free improvisation over a pedal point which I have used for the middle section. The music is not organized around a specific key but rather exploring different modal landscapes around the tone E. Please feel free to open sections for improvisation or invite your collegue to accompany you on percussion.

• Instrumentation +

  • Marimba (5-octave)

• About the composer +

  • IVANA BILIĆ is an internationally recognised marimba virtuoso and a versatile percussion artist. She graduated percussion at the Zagreb Academy of Music (prof. Igor Lešnik).
    
    She regularly appears as soloist with European orchestras and participates on international festivals (Music Biennale Zagreb, Musicora Paris, Dubrovnik Summer Festival, Julian Rachlin & Friends, Melos Ethos Bratislava, Tempus Fugit Tel Aviv etc.) Her concert activities include recitals, crossover projects, contemporary stage productions, cd recording sessions, appearances at live tv shows and cooperation with artists and ensembles in Europe, USA and South America.
    
    Ms Bilic has received all the major Croatian performers´ awards.
    
    Since 1996. Ivana has been the solo timpanist of the Symphony Orchestra of the Croatian Radio.
    
    Ivana is on faculty at the Zagreb Academy of Music. She regularly gives marimba and percussion clinics and masterclasses in USA, South America and Europe and serves as jury member on international competitions (Marimba 2010 International Festival and Conference in Minneapolis, faculty at the Zeltsman Marimba Festival in Boston 2004, Appleton 2007 and 2009, and in Amsterdam 2010,  guest artist at the Belgium Marimba Competition and Festival 2004, appearances at PASIC 2002, 2006 and 2009, jury member at Paris and Salzburg Marimba Competitions, jury member and clinician at PAS Italy Percussion Days, guest artist and clinician at Alcoy 2007 Percussion course in Spain, Festival de marimbistas, Chiapas, Mexico 2004). In 2008, in cooperation with the Samobor Autumn Music Festival she has founded an annual marimba event called Ivana Bilic Marimba Week.
    
    Ivana performs, arranges and co-edits new works for percussion and is the author of several marimba and vibraphone solos and a duo published by Malletworks and Cantus.
    
    She took part in the huge international commissioning project of ZMF New Music for Marimba project in association with C.F. Peters as one of the few best marimbists who premiered and recorded the new works. Ivana is a Marimbaone artist with her own signature line of mallets.

• Credits +

  • Front Cover artist: Nikola Krbanjevic
    Photo: Claudia Hansen
    Engraving: Ivana Bilić
    Printed in Copenhagen, Denmark
    Copyright © Edition SVITZER www.editionsvitzer.com

Related publications

Concerto for Ivana (chamber version)

Folk Art