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Music open thread: Xylophone concertos [1]

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Date: 2025-03-10

The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) still exists. Founded sixty years ago by a bill from Congress signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson (D, 1963 — 1969), the federal agency still provides funding for various arts projects throughout the United States.

But with Elon Musk subordinate Donald Trump’s executive orders against anything “woke,” priorities at the NEA are changing. Last month, Jennifer Schuessler reported for the New York Times that

The National Endowment for the Arts has eliminated a grant program supporting projects for underserved groups and communities ... On Thursday, [February 6, 2025,] the endowment said that its next round of funding under its “Challenge America” program, which would have awarded a total of $2.8 million in small grants, was being canceled. ... In its most recent quarter, the agency distributed more than $32 million in overall grants to roughly 1,400 groups across the country. Grants under the “Challenge America” program, described as serving small projects for “underserved groups and communities that may have limited access to the arts relative to geography, ethnicity, economic status, and/or disability,” were a small fraction. They included support for ballet classes for children with disabilities in Maryland, a prison theater program in Missouri and a Native American artists residency in North Dakota.

Ballet classes for children with disabilities!? That’s unconscionable! It’s money that could be going into Elon Musk’s pocket. How else is the poor, vulnerable billionaire going to get to $1 trillion in assets?

At least no NEA webpages have been taken down, at least none that I know of. I looked up klezmer percussionist Elaine Hoffman Watts. Her NEA profile has plenty to work Trump up into a rage.

Elaine Hoffman Watts' family came to the United States from a town near Odessa[, Ukraine] in the former Soviet Union. Her father, Jacob Hoffman, was a prominent member of a klezmer band that was recorded in the 1920s. Watts received training from her father and uncles in the family's repertoire of polkas, freilachs, mazurkas, shers, and other tunes of Eastern European Jewish musical tradition. She became the first woman graduate in percussion from the Curtis Institute of Music. With many opportunities before her, Watts chose to maintain the three-generation family tradition of playing klezmer music at weddings, bar mitzvahs, and other social events. She points out that being a woman and a drummer often was a barrier in her career but as one klezmer scholar observes, "Elaine is an important role-model to young players who otherwise would have no clue that women were indeed a part of traditional Yiddish music. Because those of us who study traditional Yiddish culture have no homeland in Europe to which we can return, we rely heavily on the 78-rpm recordings that were made during the early years of the 20th century. The vast majority of musicians on those recordings were men, and Elaine's presence is critical in redressing this imbalance."

Those men included her grandfather Joseph Hoffman and her father Jacob Hoffman, one of the most renowned xylophonists ever. The family came to the United States

Be sure to go to that NEA webpage, if it hasn’t been taken down by the time you read this, and scroll down to the two audio recordings. Maybe Elaine also plays xylophone, but mostly she plays the drum set. And that’s my walk from current events to the topic of this open thread.

The xylophone is a percussion instrument that a pianist should be able to make sense of far more readily than any wind instrument, or string instruments like the violin or the guitar. To play the xylophone, you use mallets to strike wooden bars that are arranged a lot like the keys on the piano.

Mickey Mouse has some difficulty trying to play the xylophone on his birthday.

The marimba is a similar instrument, but bigger and with a lower range. The vibraphone is also similar, but it has metal bars and a motor (which I’ll explain on another occasion).

For some of you, the xylophone might be strongly associated with Bugs Bunny cartoons and other humorous music for comedies.

But I assure you that the xylophone has also been used for dreadfully serious music, and music doesn’t get much more dreadfully serious than almost the entire oeuvre of Dmitri Shostakovitch. I was wondering, for example, if Shostakovitch used xylophone in The Execution of Stepan Razin, and sure enough, he did.

After starting the open thread about tuba concertos last week, I had planned to move on to “unpitched” percussion. But as I was looking for bass drum concertos, I came across a very exciting xylophone concerto and decided I had to share it as soon as possible: Xylophone Concertino by Mayuzumi Toshiro, performed in this video by Diego Díaz on xylophone.

x YouTube Video

Elisa Vargas’s performance of this concertino is split across two YouTube videos. The first one has just the first movement,

x YouTube Video

followed by the second and third movements on a separate video.

x YouTube Video

Twelve to fifteen minutes, that seems to be about the standard duration of a xylophone concerto. Like this one by Papandopulo,

x YouTube Video

or this one by Roikjer.

x YouTube Video

But neither of those is as fun as the Mayuzumi. This one by Rzayev comes close, though.

x YouTube Video

The open thread question: What is your favorite music with xylophone solos?

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