Guest percussionists Joe Moore and Oliver Molina performed four of Moore’s original songs for students and others at the Snow Fine Arts Recital Hall Oct. 4.
“It was amazing. I think one of the most important things is that it’s inspiring for my students to see other percussionists come in, see a composer play his own music and share that with them,” percussion professor Blake Tyson said. “Their ability and their technique is just incredible.”
The title of the third song Moore and Molina performed was “Out of a Mountain of Despair,” and Moore said it “comes from a couple lines of [Martin Luther King Jr.’s] iconic speech.”
Moore said the song is supposed to show hope in times of despair with “dark” and “dissonant” sounds with lighter moments of hope, but that the song “ends on a question mark.”
Tyson talked about the second song, “Flex,” and said, “I thought that was really interesting how all the sounds blended together — the gongs and the vibraphones.” Tyson said the vibraphones had quarters taped on that created a vibrating, “sizzle” sound when Moore and Molina used a bow, typically used for a violin or cello.
Moore said that the third song, “Apex,” was written for two students’ recitals. “I tried to get them out of the norm of percussion instruments,” Moore said, mentioning glass bottles as one of the nontraditional items used. The song also featured the triangle, snare, toms, bongos and more.
“I really liked the last piece,” Tyson said. The last song, “Secrets We Keep” featured four movements, titled “whispering,” “concealing,” “withholding” and “revealing.”
Moore described the four movements as being “about that idea: secrets we keep,” and that it could apply to family, friends or others. Moore said that the movements go from telling the secret, hiding it, not telling the whole truth and, finally, revealing the secret.
The song featured a variety of instruments like vibraphones, toms, a conga and a bass drum.
Molina said the group’s name, “Omojo Percussion Duo,” comes from a combination of his and Moore’s names.
The first song, “Geaux,” had Molina on the snare drum and Moore on the timpanis — large, copper drums. Moore played the timpanis with his hands as opposed to the regular mallets during some sections of the song.
Molina said the two have visited many schools, and have more stops in Arkansas and Missouri. “We heard some great playing today from students,” Molina said about their stop at UCA.
A full live stream of the performance can be found on the music department’s YouTube channel.
Moore teaches at the University of Louisiana at Monroe and the University of Texas at Arlington, according to the concert program, and is a part of multiple percussion duos outside of “Omojo.”
Molina is “active as a performer and clinician and is associate professor of music at Northwestern State University,” according to the program.
The two met while studying music at the University of Central Florida and began performing together in 2004 according to the program.
