Philadelphia Percussion + Piano Project - Marc Mellits: No Strings Attached (2021)

New York, NY – August 11, 2021 – On August 20, BCM D records will release No Strings Attached: Percussion Music by Marc Mellits from the Philadelphia Percussion Piano Project, recorded at the Boyer College of Music and Dance at Temple University. Anchored by the Boyer College’s Artistic Director of Percussion Phillip O’Banion, the rotating chamber ensemble seeks to underscore the variety and depth of the chamber percussion and piano repertoire, adjusting in size and instrumentation as needed to maximize the range of works it performs. This release follows their 2020 album, Radiant Outbursts: (In) Human Progress, with music by George Antheil, Leonard Bernstein and Adam Silverman.

The works performed on No Strings Attached were written and arranged by composer Marc Mellits. The first piece, Black, has been performed nearly 3,000 times globally and exists in multiple versions, including its original two–bass clarinet scoring and later versions for two vibraphones, two marimbas, or four marimbas. The Philadelphia Percussion Piano Project “preferred the four-marimba version,” says Phillip O’Banion, “as it maintained the homogeneity of timbre, like the original, had a similar full-throated and woody quality, and just seemed to balance and blend better through the ensemble.”

The five-movement work for which the album is named, No Strings Attached was originally written for the Auchincloss Piano, a modern fortepiano created by Howland Auchincloss that digitized the sound of the old instrument so it would have an 18th century flavor with echoes of 1970s synthesizers. Mellits says, “I was so into it. The idea of taking the old and new and mixing them up, using a double manual Belgian harpsichord sound and putting vibraphone tones on top of it really attracted me. I think Auchincloss had only three made, so unless you were one of the people in the world who had one, the piece could not be played.”

“Phil asked me if I would be interested in arranging the piece for mallet quartet,” Mellits explains. “That’s challenging, but the more challenges and restrictions you put upon yourself, the more creative you are. I was so excited for the piece to be heard again.”

Additional works on the album include Troica, inspired by the rhythmic sounds of the bells heard on a Romanian three-horse sled ride across Transylvania and Red, written after Mellits’ chance meeting with admired Romanian poet Andrei Codrescu. The disc concludes with Gravity, a piece written for a combination of marimbas and vibraphones. “The opening of the work begins on a single pitch, D,” explains Mellits. “Then, one by one, and with each instrument following each other, new notes are built into the pulsating sound. With a musical gravitational force, the mixture of sound that these different materials make provide a springboard for the musical lines to intersect, bounce, and play off each other, always getting faster, always falling from the sky.”