Kangaroo Hill

This is my second review, but I wanted to write it because we have finally performed this in public and so have "real world" reactions which were extremely positive. We performed this work last Sunday and the band loved it and as I had suspected, the audience loved it, too! This is a demanding work which is worth every rehearsal minute because it contains some breathtakingly beautiful melodies interspersed with rhythmic sections which depict the hopping around of the kangaroos. My band is a typical community band with amateur members with a wide range of abilities. I mention that in case your group is an amateur group and you may be wondering if this would be right for you. It's a great piece full of energy which your audience will love!

Elaine Johnson has composed a great new piece for concert band!

The music is rhythmically challenging because as you can imagine kangaroos don't all move in lock-step the way a marching band does. Instead all their hopping is very random and Elaine has done a great job capturing that (much to the chagrin of my musicians who are working hard to keep the rhythmic counting straight!) The piece depicts what Elaine has observed in the land beyond her back yard to depict the life of a group of kangaroos, from the general playfulness to the tenderness of mother and a little joey kangaroo as well as the general life of a group of kangaroos. Mixed in is the playfulness of young joeys learning how to hop and beginning to explore the freedom that brings, and ends with a very upbeat, positve-feeling section.

It's a challenge but we've been rehearsing it once a week since the first week in January and it's coming together very nicely

It's definitely out of the ordinary and I would rate it a grade 5 but I could see some people rating it a grade 4 and others might rate it a grade 6. Definitely not a piece for an amateur band that rehearses three weeks in May and then starts playing weekly concerts through the summer, but for bands that have more time between performances, this will very much be a nice departure from the major warhorses of the band literature while providing excellent challenges to keep everybody (including the conductor!) on their toes.

And I'm sure the audience will love it or I would not have programmed it.