Review

Robert Spillman
Song & Dance:
Bass trombone, piano

Ithaca, New York, United States
Publisher: Edition Musicus
Date of Publication: 2020
URL: http://www.enspub.com

Score and solo part.

Primary Genre: Solo Bass/Contrabass Trombone - with piano

Bass trombone players who came of age in the 1960s knew the name Robert Spillman (b.1935) because he was the composer of Concerto for Bass Trombone (1959), one of three important works written for the instrument around that time, all with orchestra accompaniment, that every student needed to know. These pieces—the others were Patrick McCarty’s Sonata (1962), and Thom Ritter George’s Concerto (1964)—shared a common denominator in that they were all written for students of Emory Remington and were premiered at the Eastman School of Music. All three composers were students at Eastman at the time and their youthful works for bass trombone continue to be popular today. (A note to would-be composers: Spillman wrote his Concerto as an exercise for a composition class he took at Eastman. He proved it is possible to hit a home run on the first swing.) Around that same time, Spillman also wrote two other pieces that bass trombonists have happily poached from the tuba repertoire, Two Songs (with piano, 1964) and Four Greek Preludes (unaccompanied, 1969).

In 2019, after a fifty-plus-year period of low brass compositional quietude, Spillman published two new works for trombone, Five Songs Without Words (trombone and piano), and Song & Dance (bass trombone and piano). Commissioned by Jonathan Warburton, Song & Dance is an attractive piece in two movements in dramatically different styles. The first, Ballad, features an expansive melody that, after several meter and tempo changes, ends quietly with a dreamy piano cadence. It presents no technical demands to the performers and has a range from D-flat to f1. Hoe Down is more active, a brisk treatment of a number of folk tunes, including “Forked Deer,” and “Sally Goodin.” Its range of A to b1 presents its greatest challenge, and there are several glissandi peppered throughout and a 10-measure section of simple multiphonics that simulate a fiddle or bagpipe drone. As the piece hurtles to its conclusion, it quotes “The Girl I Left Behind Me.”

The lush Ballad followed by the zippy Hoe Down might make for a fun recital closer. But another alternative could be to separate the two movements and play just one or the other as an encore, or pair each of these very different compositions with other pieces of like character and message, in the manner of the suites of works by divergent composers that David Taylor began popularizing in the 1980s. Song & Dance provides us with a fascinating glimpse at the stylistic evolution of a composer who made a strong mark on the bass trombone’s repertoire with his youthful Concerto and now—after retiring from a long career as Chair of the piano faculty and Music Director of the opera program at University of Colorado—has given us a new work to enjoy.