Review

David Fetter
Scheheraslide: The Impossible Joke

Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Publisher: Cherry Classics Music
Date of Publication: 1976 / 2024
URL: http://www.cherryclassics.com

Score

Primary Genre: Trombone Ensembles - 3 trombones

Esteemed trombonist, pedagogue, and composer David Fetter pushes the boundaries of musical comedy with his work ScheheraSlide: The Impossible Joke for Three Trombones. Fetter expertly takes the instantly recognizable melodies of Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade and puts a trombone twist on the themes. Slide vibrato? Microtones? Glissandi? Spoken word? This three-minute trio has it all! Fetter puts the musicians’ extended techniques to the test with different speeds of slide vibrato and placing notes up and down 1/4 and 1/8 of the original pitch. Fetter takes the audience on a waggish journey through Rimsky-Korsakov’s motifs by bending the pitches and implementing long, drawn out glissandi. As the three parts play notes microtones apart, listeners are tested with their capacity for dissonance that is often immediately resolved through a lengthy glissando.

Perhaps the greatest opportunity for exaggerated performance effects in this piece is the spoken word component. Fetter takes the opening excerpt from the first movement of Scheherazade but has the trio verbalize the counting of their rests with a hearty “one-two” during the empty 6/8 bar. This is followed by two dotted quarter notes which afterwards the musicians once again remove the horn from their face to whisper a mysterious second “one-two” as the dynamics subside. With engaging musicians, this piece has the ability to bring the hilarity and absurdity of other great tongue-in-cheek trombone pieces such as John Cage’s Solo for Sliding Trombone and Simon Lesley’s Two Terrible Trombones. With Fetter’s wit of arrangement of Rimsky-Korsakov’s materials and the quintessential elements that make the trombone the trombone, this composition is a perfect combination of technique and comedy.