Review

John Kenny
Pandora’s Box:

Coventry, , United Kingdom
Publisher: Warwick Music Publishers
Date of Publication: 2003
URL: http://www.warwickmusic.com
Language: English

Primary Genre: Study Material - etude
Secondary Genre: Study Material - method

John Kenny, a marvelous musician and composer, has given us several worthy pieces to chew on over the years. Pandora’s Box, conceived in 1993, is more of a guideline for creative warm-up or practice, since all of the specific notes are left up to the performer. In a grid of boxes, Kenny offers categories of various performance techniques, with the performer deciding on the pathways s/he might choose. Kenny has used this approach in his own warm-ups, and envisions this piece appropriate for private use, for solo performance, or in conjunction with others. The boxes include familiar and conventional techniques: long tones, scalic/modal movement, glissandi, varied articulation, use of mutes, as well as “extended techniques:” multiphonics, circular breathing, trills, vocalization, inhaled tone, playing portions of a dismantled instrument, etc. In the center of the page is a box called “long tones,” because of their foundational value to the brass player. The player must frequent the long tone box in order to navigate elsewhere to some degree.

This practice approach generates value when the trombonist makes playing decisions from his own motivations and abilities. Interpreting symbols that specify extended techniques can be difficult at first and specific techniques can be beyond one’s own abilities. In this case the player may be as creative as curiosity experience and mood dictate. It can be surmised that one’s progress with extended techniques might improve at a faster pace than if those specifics are predetermined. Certainly this is one of Kenny’s goals: to make that which is “extended” less so.

Obviously, each performance of Pandora’s Box will be totally different, and none would be recognizable as a work by Mr. Kenny except for a mention of his authorship in a program. But having Kenny’s grid on a stand in one’s practice room will certainly encourage many to practice with a greater sense of what might be possible.

David Loucky
Middle Tennessee State University