Steven's Song

Listen to the work here!
 
Steven’s Song is a work for solo vibraphone dedicated to my father, Steven Waters, and was written as a gift for him for Father’s Day. My dad has supported me through everything I do and has always led with compassion and care, and I wanted to create a gift for him for Father’s Day that expressed my gratitude for him in a way more true to its quantity than I felt could be summated in a card, resulting in the creation of this piece.
 
This piece, in binary form with a brief reprise of the first section serving as a coda, uses the various textures of the vibraphone to paint a picture of my dad’s hometown of Iowa City, Iowa. The opening material of the work is the most strictly jazz-influenced of the whole piece, and is meant to conjure the image of the college town bar, its walls lined with memorabilia and framed newspaper excerpts, like many restaurants I visited with my family in Iowa City as a child. The staccato 16th note material throughout the first main section of the work, which quickly slips through different tonal areas, patters like raindrops using the staccato texture of the instrument played with the pedal up. The second section of the piece chimes as a university carillon, interrupted by what could be interpreted as the hustle and bustle of campus life. The work also serves as a companion to my work Carolyn’s Song, written for my mother for Mother’s Day, and the two works may be performed simultaneously – not two incomplete parts of one whole, but two complete statements that nonetheless bring out the best in each other, as my
parents do.