Viitala Sakari: Ice dance, Score

Ice Dance Score.

Ice Dance was composed by a need for new percussion ensemble pieces. The order was made by Sakari´s percussion teacher in his hometown: Kokkola, Finland. Sakari was asked to compose from four to five new pieces per year for the Conservatory´s ensemble to perform. Sakari premiered all the pieces with the ensemble and the teacher Mika Viik was conducting.

The idea for this piece comes from figure skating and I used to watch figure skating competitions from tv when I was teenager.
Ice dance is composed for percussion quintet and among unpitched percussion I wrote pitched percussion instruments such as marimba, vibraphone, glockenspiel, timpani and tubular bells which are commonly  used in symphony orchestras.

Ice dance is composed in three movements. Glockenspiel and Vibraphone has soloistic parts. Marimba part is written to be in the accompaniment style, but it also has some solos and melody lines. In this piece I have written the bassline for Timpani and some tuning also needs to be made during the piece.

These percussion ensemble works are composed from a pedagogical perspective and for Ostrobothnia Conservatory percussion ensemble in Kokkola, Finland. The parts follow the curtain level of the ensemble and the parts are also individually made for every player keeping in mind what they are capable to play. Different music genres and styles weren't a pedagogical choice but came with my own intuition with each piece during the composing time. 

Ice dance has beautiful melodies and for intermediate level students it is a good pic because it has both easy and challenging parts to study and play. The music has many influences from popular music but it also has some elements from classical music like chord progressions, tempo changes and so on.