Work

Programme Note

Banda is a genre that sprang to life in the late nineteenth century when Mexican music collided with the polka of German immigrants. Traditional bandas are centred around the sousaphone and the tambora (a bass drum with a hi-hat on top). Beyond these, you’ll find further wind, brass and percussion instruments depending on the regional style: clarinets, saxophones, alto horns, trumpets, trombones, tarolas (snare drums) and more.

A few months before writing this piece I’d seen a YouTube video of Chicago group Banda Sincera performing before a Mexican national team football match*. The atmosphere was party, the tempo was quick, the time was compound, the licks were virtuosic, and the pulse was always getting disrupted at the ends of sections. The band would pause, the tarolero and sousaphone dude would go off on a soloistic tangent, and then the band was back in for more of the same. They even stuck a conga-based cumbia in the middle! These guys were mental and I loved it.

When I started on a piece for Saxcess I established the reasonably serious beginnings of Huff, but I kept getting pulled down this raucous Mexican garden path. I put the serious to one side, started a new score, took a few days to get this “banda chiflada” (crazy band) out of my system, and resumed composing Huff when I was done. They’re two very different pieces, but ultimately cut from the same cloth.

• Banda Sincera playing Arriba Pichátaro here: http://youtu.be/Cm1dcT710d8

Commissioned:

Composed at the request of Debbie Rawson & Saxcess. Written with the support of the University of Otago Mozart Fellowship.

• Saxcess

Difficulty:

Advanced

Influences:

• Latin American

Performance History

	27 Jun 2012	Performed by Saxcess: Debbie Rawson (soprano sax), Reuben Chin (alto sax), Hayden Sinclair (tenor sax), Graham Hanify (baritone sax), at St Paul’s Presbyterian Church, in Whanganui
		Saxcess
	30 Jun 2012	Performed by Saxcess at the Cromwell Memorial Hall, in Cromwell
		Saxcess
	01 Jul 2012	Performed by Saxcess at the Lake Wanaka Centre, in Wanaka
		Saxcess
	06 Jul 2012	Performed by Saxcess at the Whakatane Baptist Centre, in Whakatane.
		Saxcess
	07 Jul 2012	Performed by Saxcess at the Woolshed Theatre, in Te Awamutu
		Saxcess
	08 Jul 2012	Performed by Saxcess at Ascension Winery, in Warkworth
		Saxcess
	10 Jul 2012	Performed by Saxcess at the Old Library Building Arts Centre, in Whangarei
		Saxcess
	16 Jul 2012	Performed by Saxcess at Expressions Genesis Energy Theatre, in Upper Hutt
		Saxcess