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Below are notable performances showcasing a variety of musical settings from solo and chamber music to large ensemble pieces.

 

Time for Marimba - Minoru Miki

This piece is a masterwork in the marimba repertoire, and can also be used as a valuable teaching tool to developing marimbists. The piece is based on a group of six notes that are slowly changed and shifted to create an entrancing musical texture.

Space Junk (2017) is a children's story / percussion quartet written and composed by Ivan Trevino and commissioned by Lagan Percussion. The story is about a little star who gets covered in space junk, makes her way out it, and creates beautiful things with it.

SPace Junk - Ivan Trevino

This piece is the result of a commission with the group Lagan Percussion, which Taylor is a founding member. The piece is a children's story set to music for percussion quartet + narrator. The story follows a little star in space who is covered with junk, and is sad. Throughout the story the little star makes things out of the junk and realizes there is beauty in the smallest things. Lagan will be performing this piece as part of a presentation at the 2018 Percussion Arts Society International Convention in Indianapolis, Indiana this November.

Performed by Lagan Percussion Ricky Bracamontes, Taylor Davis, James Ferris, and Ian Houston Lagan Percussion is a group that strives to create and present important musical events to receptive and curious audiences. Lagan hopes to invite listeners into a new musical world, and bring contemporary percussion music to the forefront of conversation.

Threads - Paul Lansky

Threads is a half-hour long "cantata" for percussion quartet in ten short movements. There are three "threads" that are interwoven in the piece: Arias and Preludes that focus on the metallic pitched sounds of vibraphones, glockenspiel and pipes; Choruses in which drumming predominates; and Recitatives made largely from Cage-like noise instruments, bottles, flower pots, crotales, etc. The aim of the different threads is to highlight the wide range of qualities that percussion instruments are capable of, from lyrical and tender to forceful and aggressive, and weave them into one continuous "thread".

EIn Heldenleben - Richard Strauss

Baylor Symphony Orchestra, led by Professor Stephen Heyde, performing Ein Heldenleben ("A Hero's Life") by Richard Strauss on February 4, 2014 in Jones Concert Hall on Baylor's campus in Waco, TX. Ein Heldenleben  is among several of the composer’s works that can be read as musical autobiography. By this point in his career — he was 34 years old when he conducted its premiere — Strauss’s sense of self-esteem was in no way underdeveloped. Asked to explain the program of this piece, Strauss declined, insisting: “There is no need of a program. It is enough to know that there is a hero, fighting his enemies.” Of course there was a program of some sort, even if Strauss never tipped his hand about it, and commentators have spilled much ink speculating about the details of this huge score.