I am preparing for my senior recital this semester, and I am looking for some opinions of some good marimba concertos or even pieces. The only for sure marimba piece I am doing is Zivkovic's Ultimatum 1. I have really considered Ney Rosearo's (sorry about spelling) Marimba Concerto (I believe in the title it says, "...para cordas" but I dont know.
Any suggestions?

October night by micheal burritt is a great piece, but i don't really know about your skill level, so it may be too easy/hard for you. i don't think i can really make any good suggestions without hearing you play, but i would say talk to your private lesson teacher or your percussion director

I'm assuming this is a Bachelor's of Music recital. What pieces have you played before? Are you a performance major or something else?

Tangential line of questions:
Also, do you have an overall theme in mind for your recital? Most of the time recitals are just a collection of unrelated pieces. Play. Applause. Bow. Walk off stage. Play. Applause. Bow. Walk off stage. Play. Applause. Bow. Walk off stage. Yawn.
I'd encourage you to do something to make it stand out. Either work in some transitions between pieces or have some overarching theme running through the whole program.
Don't be just another recital!

Well as I said before, I will be playing Zivkovic's Ultimatum 1. I will play Keiko Abe's Tambourine Paraphrase. I may go ahead and do Stout's Two Mexican Dances. I am really consisdering Nay Rosauro's Concerto para Cordos or whatever the title is, but that is still up for grabs.
Other pieces done. Maslanka - Theme and Variations of a Love Song I believe. Keiko Abe - Frogs. Alice Gomez - Rain Dance and Gitano. Furioso and Valse. Green - The Whirlwind. Some Musser Etudes. Song of the Libra. The Tempest. Bach - Invention 4. Etude in D Minor (I believe by Gomez, but I am not sure).

The only other pieces I have thought about are maybe some other Abe pieces, maybe the two mexican dances, but i dont know. Thanks for your inputs.

The Rosauro Concerto for percussion is a great piece. I don't know Ultimatum but I played some piece by Zivkovic (something about lost souls) that was pretty cool.

Variations on Theme of Lost Love by Maslanka is absolutely incredible. Very technically demanding in sections but also lyrical and beautiful in other sections. That's one of my favorite pieces ever.

if you're thinking about Rosauro and Maslanka, I wouldn't bother with pieces like Frogs or even Furioso and Valse. They're more of first or second year of college pieces. Stout gets done to death so I'd lean away from that unless you're trying to do some sort of retrospective on marimba compositions. If that's the case, definitely do a Musser piece.

Merlin by Andrew Thomas is a great piece. Pretty common. there are some great fast sections with double stops in both hands. Reflections on the Nature of Water by Jacob Druckman is another great one. Interesting tonalities and a lot of difficult technical sections (but I think the music is really expensive). Gunther Schuller's Marimbology is a cool piece with a really stupid name.

Of course, anything by my old teacher, Julie Spencer, is great. i played a piece of hers called Pink Elisa Spring that is awesome. More of a jazz tune. Lots of independant scales and 32nd note rhythms in the right hand while you're comping with the left. She did another one that is similar but has a more open rhythm called Chelsea Window. One more by Julie, a piece called Cat Clock III. Two mallet piece but it uses this bizarre technique to play some really fast and impressive runs. That's a good one for an encore or something because it's exciting and it's only about 2 minutes long.

One last thing I played a piece called Altered Echoes by Lynn Glassock that was very cool. Lots of choppy parts and interesting rhythms. And you almost never hear anybody playing it.

Thanks much for all the suggestions.

Ok, I'm no expert on marimba pieces, but a piece that I am learning right now is "Parody" by Jesse Monkman. You can find it at tapspace.com. From seeing the other pieces yall have mentioned here, I imagine that this piece it much simpler that what you want, but it's just a suggestion.

hey that is a good piece. I like the jam in it, and the passionato emotion. I think I may try it. I went and downloaded it. Which reminds me, Mr. BeatMaster, would you happen to know where I could maybe hear samples of some of those pieces you mentioned. I have heard of those pieces, but haven't heard them.

A simpoler piece, that reminds me of this somewhat is Katamia. I am not sure who it is by, but I like it.

And Mr. DrumsNRoses, thanks. I liked the piece.

Katamiya is by a dude named Emmanuel Séjourné. Very cool piece. You can check that one out on Nancy Zeltsman's CD "See Ya Thursday." That CD also has Marimbology on it. Merlin is on her other CD, "Woodcuts."

My computer at work is pretty hosed right now so I can't make any clips for you to check out. What you might do is see if Amazon has any CDs with these tunes. Sometimes they have audio excerpts.

And don't call me mister. I work for a living...

Thanks much __. BeatMaster. I am sorry about the title, I have a bad habit I quess. Anyway, thanks a lot, and I will check those out.

just curious, . . . have you ever heard "Uncommon Times" from rowloff.com? I have it and it's quite an entertaining piece.

Never heard of it (but that doesn't mean much). I tried to check out the audio clip on their website but couldn't get it to work.

How about Mark Ford's Polaris?

I've never played it, but it looks reasonably hard, and it's pleasing to the ear!

Polaris I've heard of, but I don't know it either. I'm startin' to think I don't know ANY marimba rep.

Hey, Jake. What did you end up picking out for your recital?

Hey i've heard the uncommon times. It is an awesome piece. My old section leader who graduated just last year played it at as a solo for our last concert. It was awesome. Even though she used to play her made up version of it over and over again during marching season. And i hated hearing her practice over and over again! But she used my marimba at the concert and it was awesome.

For those who haven't heard Polaris there's a sample of it (and other peices by innovative) on www.innovativepercussion.com and here's a video of Mark Ford himself playing it on http://www.pearldrum.com/03_videos5.asp as well as a Clip of SCV

Polaris is really good and Uncommon Times is cool when you get someone to play it who knows what they're doing. This one girl in our pit last year tried to play it and she kept screing up big time because she had only played marimba for a few months. After a while, one of the people who knew what they were doing took their mallets and (quoted directly) said, "Let me show you howthis is done." She played so good that a small crowd gathered around her while she was and when she finished, she got a big applause. She was the best (and hottest) marimba player I've heard since I've been in band

My old section leader who graduated last year was really good. Even though uncommon times was a really long sound she had to cut it down to about two minutes. But what she played was great! Even though it was soooo annoying coz she played it everyday as a warm up! Just coz! But yeah i was proud of her.

Jenna, I just now noticed the last quote in your sig.
Anyway, you're right it does get annoying once you hear it too many times. But if you hear it alot a lot but not very often, it's really cool.

Wait till you go to a conservatory and hear people practicing Porgy and Bess endlessly.

oh geez porgy and bess. My band director was going over mallet choice with a new freshman in concert band and he was like you wouldn't hear a person play Porgy and Bess with these and he played it with the softest mallets we had. And than the hardest. But now he's getting me the music for it so i can learn it coz its awesome!

Whats really cool for recitals is when you grab some classical piece from the public domain and transfer it to your own instrument. Right now I'm working on Toccata and Fugue in Dminor by J.S. Bach (actually there is no proof he wrote that piece but thats a different story).