Zachary W. Webb

In the past few years, I have been actively researching the percussion compositions of Giorgio Battistelli, an obscure, Italian composer most well known for his contributions to contemporary opera. I was first introduced to Battistelli through his piece Il Libro Celibe (The Celibate Book), a fascinating book-like sound sculpture which the performer must build. My work in the last year has centered on raising awareness of Battistelli’s contributions to the percussion art form, and has resulted in recordings of three works by Battistelli which will be released in the next few months: Il Libro Celibe, Uno e trino, and
Orazi e Curiazi.

In late April of last year, I was lucky to work with my colleagues Dr. Nave Graham and Dr. Jacob Dike to give the first performance of
Morton Feldman’s For Philip Guston in the
greater Cincinnati area. The work lasts for over four hours and is scored for three players on piano, celeste, flute, alto flute, piccolo, marimba, vibraphone, chimes, and
glockenspiel. We were fortunate to be able to record the work, and our performance will come out in its full recorded version this coming summer.