marramahata
2025
Instrumentation: percussion ensemble (minumum 10 players)
Duration: 12 minutes Premiere Performance: July 17, 2025; Lincoln Center, Hearst Plaza, NYC.
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2025
Instrumentation: percussion ensemble (minumum 10 players)
Duration: 12 minutes Premiere Performance: July 17, 2025; Lincoln Center, Hearst Plaza, NYC.
marramahatta is a play on the words marra and mahatta. In Portuguese, marra can mean a kind of struggle and "stubbornness," which resonates with the piece’s insistent, repetitive structures. mahatta alludes to Manhattan (where the piece was premiered),
and nods to a similarly titled song by the Brazilian band Sepultura (their drummer, Igor Cavalera, is a childhood hero of mine).
This five-syllable title further reflects the piece’s obsession with the number five. This music reimagines the Brazilian batucada tradition with a modern twist, blending shifting and odd meters, liminal processes,
microtonality, and spatialization.
The work by The Juilliard School of Music and Samuel Solomon, for an outdoo performance at Lincoln Center’s Brazil Week, in the Summer of 2025. A second revised version, fitted for a more traditional batucada
instrumentation, was arranged for percussionist Gregory Beyer, in January of 2026.
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This five-syllable title further reflects the piece’s obsession with the number five. This music reimagines the Brazilian batucada tradition with a modern twist, blending shifting and odd meters, liminal processes,
microtonality, and spatialization.
The work by The Juilliard School of Music and Samuel Solomon, for an outdoo performance at Lincoln Center’s Brazil Week, in the Summer of 2025. A second revised version, fitted for a more traditional batucada
instrumentation, was arranged for percussionist Gregory Beyer, in January of 2026.
