Review

Joseph Trapanese
Sonata for Trombone and Piano:

Jersey City, NJ, United States
Publisher: Joseph Trapanese
Date of Publication: 2005
URL: http://www.joecomposer.com

Piano score and solo part

Primary Genre: Solo Tenor Trombone - with piano

Currently working in Los Angeles where he writes music for film, television and concerts, Joseph Trapanese hails from Jersey City, NJ. He is a graduate of the Manhattan School of Music. Even though a young composer he has already won several awards for his work from ASCAP, the American Music Center, Yale University, UCLA, the Henry Mancini Institute, Downbeat Magazine, and he won the first annual Jerry Goldsmith Award in 2007. His work has been heard on National Public Radio, The Oprah Winfrey Show, the CBS popular daytime soap opera The Guiding Light as well as several off-Broadway productions in New York City. His film work includes numerous shorts and additional music for the independent features Necessary Evil and The Last Word. As an arranger and music programmer he has worked on the Fox television series The Loop, the ABC reality series American Inventor, and Disney’s all-time highest rated original movie Jump In!

This composition can be understood as part of the current trend established by composers like Eric Ewazen and David Gillingham, a sound characterized by functional, grounded harmony, standard rhythms and romantically conceived phrases, both lyrical and technical. But this particular sonata also incorporates extreme melodic leaps together with extreme dynamic contrasts, which significantly elevate its difficulty level. The first movement, Allegro marcato, employs a massive, Phrygian theme that generates excitement through octave and larger leaps, huge, sweeping dynamics, driving rhythms and canonic imitation in the piano with octave voicings in both hands. This soon gives way to an effective, lyrical, Brahmsian second theme that gradually becomes agitated through compounding subdivisions of piano rhythm. These themes are developed through clever embellishments that require seasoned flexibility over almost three octaves. The second movement, Canzone, is a short song stated just once, that soars to big b-flat1s, elegant, shapely, with descending bass line, static key shift in the middle, not overly dramatic. A triple meter Fuga concludes the sonata. Trombone introduces the eight measure long subject, which unfolds into intricate, playful counterpoint with piano. All the activity unravels underneath a long d2 sustained by trombone. A short cadenza and recapitulation ensues and the movement ends with a triple fortissimo rip up to e2. All this is brilliantly conceived but is edited with heavy articulations and excessive fortissimo that does not seem to fit the spirit of the music. The fast, large interval leaps combined with such huge dynamics will make clean, clear performances elusive. Nonetheless, this is fine writing, inventive, concise, expressive. Let us hope to hear much more from Joseph Trapanese.

-Mike Hall
Old Dominion University