A Story, Again, Misremembered (2017)

Team

Tenor Trombone and Bass Trombone

Preface

A Story, Again, Misremembered (2017) begins with a transcription of an audiobook recording: a 90-second rendition of one of Aesop’s fables. The story is first “read” from beginning to end by the two trombones (as the “theme”), and is then repeated in five variations. As the theme, the trombones closely emulate the recorded speech by using the same pitches and rhythms. In the variations that follow, the details of the original transcription gradually fade into longer and longer notes that simulate an expanding, reverberant space. As the variations progress, the listener retains key details from earlier readings of the story, but these details are also increasingly obscured. In the final variation, the listener only hears remnants of the original text as they dissolve into long arcs of sound between the two trombones.

Heard

July 1, 2017 Miguel Tantos Sevilliano (tenor trombone) and Brandt Attema (bass trombone), in a reading session as part of the 2017 International Trombone Festival, University of Redlands, Redlands, California.