Shades of Green (2022)
for percussion ensemble; 14 minutes
Percussion: Andrew Busch, Alex Fraga,
Randall Chaves Camacho, Nikki Huang, Bevis Ng,
Hoi Tong Keung, Thomas Li, Tim Roth, Joshua Weinfeld, Cassandra Wolff
Walter Hall, University of Toronto
Shades of Green was written for the Composer in Residence project of the University of Toronto Percussion Ensemble in 2022. After I moved to Toronto, the first performance I saw was the U of T Percussion Ensemble playing John Luther Adams’s outdoor piece Inuksuit at Philosopher’s Walk. The performance made a strong impression of the spatial experience and the percussion ensemble, and inspired me to write Shades of Green.
For this piece, ten players should spread out around the venue, ideally in a circle around the audience. The players answer and echo each other. The piece has three main sections. In the first section, I use sustained sounds from different directions to create a surround-sound effect. In the middle section, the texture is more pointillistic, which imitates random sounds from nature. In the last section, the players gradually gather at one point to play different sizes of snare drums in marching band style. It’s like a ritual or meditation event.
Score