About the Work

Conveyance (2019) was composed by Daniel Adams for the Laissez-Pair Duet: Katie Rice and Shiana Montanari, bass clarinets, and Rebecca Nickels, piano. The title of Conveyance is based on the role of the piano transform and "convey" musical ideas between the two bass clarinets in a reciprocal process. Rhythm, texture, register, and timbre, as well as pitch, are important components of the transformative process. The piece begins with successive entrances forming an overlapping texture. As the piece develops, ideas are passed rapidly between the instruments until a polyphonic climatic passage. The increasingly complex texture eventually merges into a more transparent coda.

Quoting from a review in the Fall 2004 issue of the NACWPI Journal, "Just listening to this work gives the impression of being extremely complex rhythmically, but after looking at the score, it seems quite playable. The bass clarinets blend well throughout due to the composer carefully selecting the register. [The piece] is esoteric in nature and dissonant, but not so much that it distracts. There are a few nudges toward the extended techniques, including multiphonics and timbral fingerings, but for the most part, it is traditional. Overall, I liked the piece. A university bass clarinetist could play it and it could certainly be done by a professional."

Piano score: 15 pages, spiral bound; parts: 4 pages each, booklet. Extended-range instruments NOT required.

Hard Copy Edition

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Enjoy the premiere performance from the NACWPI Conference in October 2019:

About the Composer

Daniel Adams (b. 1956, Miami, FL) is a Professor of Music at Texas Southern University in Houston where he has served on the taught courses in music theory and composition since 1988. Adams holds a Doctor of Musical Arts (1985) from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, a Master of Music from the University of Miami (1981) and a Bachelor of Music from Louisiana State University (1978). He is the composer of numerous published musical compositions and the author of many articles and reviews on various topics related to Twentieth Century percussion music, musical pedagogy, and the music of Texas. His book entitled The Solo Snare Drum was published by Honey Rock in 2000. He is also the author of two entries published in 2009 in the Oxford Encyclopedia of African-American History 1896 to the Present and has authored a revision of the Miami, Florida entry for the New Grove Dictionary of American Music (2013). Adams has served as a panelist and lecturer nationally and internationally, on topics ranging from music composition pedagogy to faculty governance. In 2011 he presented a composition Master Class at Ewha University in Seoul, South Korea. His music has been performed throughout the United States, and in Spain, Germany, Belgium, Sweden, Turkey, Costa Rica, Argentina, Canada, and South Korea. His music is recorded on Capstone, Ravello, Summit, Albany, and Potenza Records.