The Three Buccaneers
3-on-1 marimba trio
Price range: $14.00 through $35.00
The marimba is one of the most popular instruments in the Caribbean Islands. The performance of Caribbean music often features multiple players on a single marimba. Such is the case in Brian Slawson‘s The Three Buccaneers. Three players share one standard, 4.3-octave (low A) marimba to create a playful musical ride!
This piece comes as a professionally printed and bound score and includes individual parts in PDF format for printing or for tablet viewing.
- Marimba—low A*
*Shared by all 3 players
Reviews
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Josh Gottry –
Scored for three players, or according to Brian Slawson, “three buccaneers” on one low-A marimba, this tune opens in a hearty “Pirate 3” with a canon setting of what sounds like a typical sea shanty. As the eight-measure melody is repeated, additional voices layer over top with slight variations before the piece shifts to 12/8 and a more fluid arpeggio-based section. In this second half, the third marimba part takes a much less active bass-line role as compared to the more active upper voices. With a brief, five-measure coda, the piece concludes with a fleeting reference to the earlier feel.
The Three Buccaneers is short (just over two minutes) and very accessible to younger players with only a few double-stop rolled passages (at slower tempos), all keyboard parts playable with two mallets throughout, and only an occasional leading-tone C-sharp accidental departing from the D-minor key signature. This work isn’t as flashy or technically impressive as other pieces scored for this “3-on-1” instrumentation, but as an accessible work for less advanced players, it certainly has some entertainment value in performance and is open to some very obvious costuming if the players feel compelled.