Puppet Lion (2024) marimba duet (shared 4.3-oct) · 5 minutes · intermediate+
Puppet Lion was written for Ethan Hall and Rubén Acuña González as part of the Austin Percussion Collective, and premiered on March 2nd, 2024 at Studio A in Austin, TX.
I have fond memories of watching Chinese lion dances in the local Asian supermarket parking lot during Lunar New Year. The concrete surface would be full of people, packed so tightly that you couldn't move. Everyone was shouting and talking—it was a little slice of a Chinese festival, transplanted to modern-day Texas.
In these dances, two people would command one lion costume—with each person's legs being one leg of the lion. This meant that if one person stumbles, the other one would also fall.
This piece I've written—called Puppet Lion—reminds me of these dances—-with two people sharing one marimba. This piece is mostly comprised of tight polyrhythms split across players. When playing these polyrhythms, each player has to carefully line up their notes with each other—like coordinating the steps of a dancing lion, split across two people.
The musical content of Puppet Lion draws upon the rhythmic interplay found in much of the contemporary advanced percussion repretoire (such as works by Akiho or Viñao) . Much of the melodic content is inspired by riff-heavy video game music.