African Sketches

NKEIRU OKOYE Composer

Additional Information

"Volume 1 (Early Intermediate) contains selections that should be accessible to students having played the intermediate works of Kabalevsky. These pieces have relatively thin textures and a fairly small hand span, while still possessing many sophisticated and intricate compositional effects. Two highlights from this volume are “Dusk” by Nkeiru Okoye (Nigeria), and Ticklin Toes by Florence Price (USA). Okoye’s reflective piece creates a wonderfully impressionistic sheen using many Debussy-esque parallel fourths and fifths, while Price’s jovial cakewalk has all the humor its title suggests." - The Score (Louisiana Music Teachers Assoc), May 09

Stats

Length 10’

Genre series of piano shorts

Audiences general

COMPOSITIONS

AFRICAN SKETCHES

The AFRICAN SKETCHES are amongst the first serious contemporary piano works by African composers performed in the People’s Republic of China. The SKETCHES have been performed at Churchill College in England, and in numerous halls across the United States of America.

1. Dancing Barefoot in the Rain

2. The Village Children At Play

3. Dusk

NOTES

“The Village Children at Play.” My early childhood was spent traveling between America and Nigeria, where I lived during my fourth grade academic year. A popular hand-clapping game played by some of the girls had an additive element to them, which is inspired “The Village Children at Play.”

“Dusk” was the first piece written after the passing of Noel DaCosta who’d been my mentor and friend for a decade. It took gentle persuasion by pianist Mark Boozer to write “a little something” for a recital to break my ensuing creative silence. Sitting at the piano that afternoon, I conceptualized what became my first slow work. It is soulful, spiritual, and reflective, invoking the still, reflective spirituality of my departed teacher.

“Dancing Barefoot in the Rain” recalls the rainy season, from life in Enugu (a city in South East Nigeria). As children, whenever warm tropical drops filled the sky, my sister and I would run downstairs and across the courtyard surrounding our home to meet our playmates for an afternoon of slippery, barefoot fun.

Programming Information

Instrumentation solo piano

Additional “Dusk” and “Dancing Barefoot in the Rain” are available in the Oxford University Press ANTHOLOGY OF PIANO MUSIC OF THE AFRICAN DIASPORA, Volume 1.