Azura is a nostalgic textural piece that celebrates the ephemeral qualities of love and beauty. We can’t hold on to these feelings forever, but we can cherish them fully with memories and music. Likewise, the melody seems to sway between beautiful major seven textures and passionate diminished passages representing the harsh reality of missing someone.

For solo marimba (5.0)

“Azura” is described by the composer as “a nostalgic textural piece that celebrates the ephemeral qualities of love and beauty.” Jérémie Carrier represents these ideas through a ternary-form work that relies heavily on two different mallet permutations in the first and last section as well as block chords in the middle section.

The opening section revolves solely around running sixeteenth notes in a 4-1-3-2 permutation. Following this opening section there is transitional material that brings us to the middle section, which consists of block chords in eighth notes with small polyrhythmic variations scattered throughout. A final transitional section brings us back to the opening material in a enw key, but now in 12/8 as opposed to the opening 4/4 , and with a mallet permutation of 4-1-3-2-3-1 throughout. As with the opening section, this part builds to transitional material, which now acts as the coda for the piece.

Given the limited technical scope, as well as the freedom provided by the composer in the performance notes for players to make the piece their own musically, this piece would work well for an undergraduate-level peformer.

-Brian Nozny, Percussive Notes, May 2019