“No Strings Attached” was originally composed for an instrument known as the Auchincloss Piano, of which relatively few are still in existence.  This was a colorful new instrument that contained digital samples of historic keyboard instruments as well as samples of new ones, all within a traditional fortepiano keyboard and design.  Percussionist Phillip O’Banion and the “Philadelphia Percussion + Piano Project” at Temple University commissioned the mallet quartet edition.  I found that two Vibraphones and two Marimbas were able fully realize the original music and present it in new and far more colorful ways.  Having four people play what was once intended for one allowed for a much larger and more driving sound as well.  The music itself is sometimes playful, sometimes reverent, but almost always flowing and moving forward.  The lines combine and mix together bringing the ancient to the present and the future into the past.

-MM