Sextet

Sextet
Composed by Zeke Hecker (2012)
For Piano and Winds
Published by Trillenium Music Company
Includes parts and piano score 

Instrumentation:
Flute, Oboe, Clarinet in Bb, Horn in F, Bassoon, and Piano

Contents:
I. Allegro vivace
II. Barcarolle
III. Tango
IV. Meditation
V. Tarantella

      Zeke Hecker was born in Newark, New Jersey in 1947, and attended the Lawrenceville School and Harvard College. Since 1971, he has lived in Guilford, Vermont and taught English at Brattleboro Union High School. He is an active performer, as principal oboist of the Pioneer Valley Symphony and many other ensembles around Brattleboro. And, he is a composer, with now over 200 works. Many of these are for the musical theater; they've been performed in London, Barcelona, New York and in Vermont. There are many pieces of chamber music, music for orchestra, and works for television as well.
      For this careful publication of a unique chamber work, he writes: 
      The Sextet for Piano and Winds is a light-hearted piece, rather in the nature of a suite with several dance-like movements. The wind and the piano toss material back and forth in conversation or competition. The most distinctive feature of the work is that its matieral is derived entirely from the first phrase, a four-note figure – Bb, G, Eb, F. That figure in its original form is the theme of Mvt. I, II, and V; in Mvt. III the phrase is reversed; in Mvt. IV the pitches are shuffled but the phrase retains its predictable shape. The composer ruefully admits that this device was an exercise not in skill, but stinginess; he needed to surrender only one tune out of his dwindling stock…
      The Sextet was first performed in London on May 28, 2014 at a concert of the Oxford and Cambridge Musical Club by pianist Alan Reddish, flutist Stephen O'Hanlon, oboist Joann Houghton, clarinetist Barbara Wylie, hornist John Parker and bassoonist Hugh Rosenbaum.
      This composer is gifted …he writes serious music that has gaiety and humor, fully aware of the times we live in. Trillenium takes great pride in bringing this work to publication, and we trust this Sextet will take its place in the small-enough repertoire for this chamber grouping.
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