Summer Salsa (for Guitar Sextet) Miroslav Loncar
Les Productions d'Oz, 20 pp. plus parts
A score full of interest and challenges, with lots of potential
There are 11 different percussive effects, of which two are actually a sequence of four actions. Sometimes the publisher writes in French, sometimes in French and English; this time, it is explained only in English, and it's complicated. However, the complexity of all this is worth taking some time over, as many of the actions are chosen to emulate instruments, such as claves.
This isn't a short work-each part score has a single page turn, but every turn has been individually positioned so that it takes place over a rest. Ensemble music with large numbers of parts is always harder to review, as the total sound is more complex. As is increasingly the case, a performance is already on YouTube by the time the music comes for review, and this can be a real help to us all. At the end of the day, a review is about helping potential customers buy music that is right for their ensemble. In this case, I want to go on record and say the music is better than the performance on YouTube might suggest. Being captured at a summer school, the video performance isn't as well rehearsed as a performance ensemble would be; the percussion here really doesn't work if it's flabby.
But the score is full of interest and challenges, and there's a lot more potential in this work than one might think. The bass line is generally played by guitars Five and Six, and although these
parts are the simplest, at perhaps Grade Four, they are rewarded with extra percussion, where they are key players in the sounds cape. Guitars Three and Four form the distinctive rhythmic chord progressions, and these parts are rewarding to play and comfortable for players of Grades Five and Six, once some of the more complex off-beat rhythms gel. The upper two parts are more a challenge, in terms of speed, rhythmic variety and up-the-neckiness. For these, Grade Eight is needed if the piece is to be played with energy and tightness.
Fingering is minimal, positions are shown here and there, and I much prefer that to string numbers. There are no , dynamics, but think "joyous" and take it
from there. -D.H
