THEY MAY BE ALIKE for Marimba and Percussion（2024）

I composed a piece entitled FloFlaima (published by Zen-On Music) some time ago for vibraphone in response to a commission from the percussionist Takeshi Kubota, and the present piece is intended to serve as a companion to this earlier work.
Takeshi seems to have hoped that I would come up with a piece with a fairly melodious character, but FloFlaima, which has been frequently performed by several other percussionists since, consists of music with a mysterious atmosphere and abundant with technical difficulty and a meditative character.
Since Takeshi is also a close friend, when I received news that his wife had just given birth to a daughter I thought that I’d really like to offer him a congratulatory gift to celebrate the event. This was the background to the birth of this piece and provided me with the opportunity to develop my long-held idea of creating a melodious work.
Parents inevitably share features in common with their children. The children may well feel an instinctive resistance to acknowledging this fact, and they will have already become adults by the time they do in fact come to recognise it. Those in their immediate environment who notice these resemblances may find them delightful and may even feel a touch of envy on observing them. The theme I have tackled in this work involves the use of different types of instruments that move sometimes in the same and sometimes in opposite directions, with multi-coloured sounds emerging from out of their constantly interlocking movement. The title, with its implication of ‘two of a kind’, reflects my aim in this piece to create music with a comical character in which the interrelated melodic movement parallels the relationship between a child and its parents in a bright manner intended to invoke happiness.