Jörgen van Rijen - Self-service

The Bach cello suites are some of the best examples of self-service compositions for a single melodic solo-instrument. They are so beautiful and interesting that you don’t need any other instrument as accompaniment. The one instrument is enough, the accompaniment is included in the piece itself, with bass lines, middle voices etcetera.

Unfortunately Bach never wrote solo music for trombone, but the great cellist and Bach specialist Anner Bijlsma made a very beautiful and radical arrangement of the 2nd suite for trombone for me. His idea was: if you try to play as many of the original notes you can on trombone and just leave out a few notes here and there to breath, it will become something like a sportive, olympic event and it looses its beauty. If you play it on trombone, you should radically change it and customize it to the character of the instrument trombone. That’s what he did in this arrangement.

I thought it would be interesting to explore how composers nowadays could use this idea of including the accompaniment in a piece for a single solo instrument like the trombone, using modern techniques and electronics.

Through the program the use of electronics builds up: In ‘On the Road’ by Wim Henderickx there is just the sound of a drone, one note that changes very little during the piece. In ‘I was like wow’ by Jacob TV there is already a whole sound track with voices of American Soldiers explaining there experiences during the Iraq war. Then it even gets more complicated: in 'Slipstream' by Florian Maier I use a loopstation to record and loop myself to build a whole trombone ensemble as my accompaniment and the latest piece by Dimitar Bodurov includes loops as well, but on top of that also samples and sound effects. All pieces have different kinds of ‘self-service’ accompaniment.

Self-service for solo trombone:
J.S. Bach - Prelude from cello suite 2
Wim Henderickx - On the Road
J.S. Bach - Allemande from cello suite 2
Jacob TV - I was Like Wow
J.S. Bach - Courante from cello suite 2
Florian Magnus Maier - Slipstream
J.S. Bach - sarabande + menuettos from cello suite 2
Dimitar Bodurov - Inner Voice
J.S. Bach - Gigue from suite 2

Jörgen van Rijen - trombone

Member concert
Splendor can only be the independent and free hub that it is, thanks to the members who support us. We pay them back with our specialty: music. Every year, all Splendor musicians play one concert that's free for this crucial group to whom Splendor owes its everyday existence. Combined with many other events, this means that our members have free entrance to about 80 concerts a year for €9,99 p/m (and €4,99 p/m for minima and students!) – and receive a discount for all other concerts. Pretty good deal, right?

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