In 1985 I had the pleasure of traveling to Mexico with my family to go on vacation to Cancún. It was advertised as the hot new resort location and off we went. I wasn't expecting to visit Chichen-Itzá, the location southeast of the resort city, to visit the Mayan ruins. It was an experience that really impacted me and inspired me.
In college I had the opportunity to take courses in Mesoamerican anthropology and got my fix for knowing more about the Maya. By the time I was a senior, I took a seminar and had to do a final senior project. In lieu of a big paper, I wrote an original piece of music. I called it The Mayan Ballcourt and wrote it for the ensemble for whom I'd become a quasi-director, a 12 member trombone ensemble called The Stingers.
My admiration for baroque music played a role in my compositional style for this piece. One of the movements I'm including here. It opens for two trombones, the idea was that two players were going out onto the court to play. The harmonic sections were to act like a commentary on what was about to take place. There's are some quotations of Monteverdi's toccata, the one that open's L'Orfeo. The other quotation in the piece using 3s against 2s, is a nod to one of the major pieces I'd written earlier for the ensemble, Fanfare à 12.
This is one of my two most favorite movements of the work. Paul Marini plays the top part and did an excellent job; when the bass comes in, that's Orlando Quiroz; among all my Stingers recordings, this is also my favorite, for an ad hoc group that wasn't made up of all music majors, they never sounded so good.
The mood of this piece is mellow and somewhat introspective. The frissons with harmony are deliberate. What I included here is a short verbal introduction, the voice of the late Robert Hunter Greene.
I am so thankful these men and women chose to perform my music and did so with gusto. This recording won't be profound to mamy, but of all the things I've created in my life, I cherish this short recording so dearly.
It inspires me to go back to writing and arranging for trombone ensemble.