While Optimum Percussion aims to keep the majority of the instruments listed on this website in stock, not all products, colours or sizes can be available at the one time. Please place your order now using the shopping cart system and our sales team will always contact you to discuss your order should any products be unavailable. Alternatively, use the add to quote system and we will be in touch quickly to confirm price and availability, OR call (02) 9744 1829, OR email us.
Little Sea Gongs - parts: each Composer: Farr Gareth
It is not hard to see why Little Sea Gongs is one of the favourite recital pieces of the Strike percussion ensembles: this is a vivacious little jeu d’esprit whose Pacific Island drumming styles will immediately have an audience yelling its enthusiasm!
Little Sea Gongs is a miniature companion-piece to From the Depths Sound the Great Sea Gongs, a major work composed for the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra which incorporates the visual spectacle of three percussionists playing a line of ten roto toms. The drumming style is very much inspired by Rarotongan log drumming and is fast, furious and very loud.
Little Sea Gongs started as a short drumming piece to end the composer's stage show Drumdrag. Like the larger work, it was intended to be a Rarotongan-style composition, but played on western drums. It was never notated, and was intended to be flexible in its instrumentation—the drummers would simply play on whatever instruments they happened to have handy. The number of performers also varied from three to seven players.
The present quartet arrangement of Little Sea Gongs was made at the request of Murray Hickman of the percussion ensemble Strike, and has since become one of the group's most frequently performed pieces.
