Composing Spotlight: Badinage

I wrote Badinage in the Fall of 1999, inadvertently making it the last piece in my repertoire to be considered "Contemporary 20th Century" music. It was originally performed by Allen Bachelder and Jim Bryant on my 5th Year Recital, and then again by me and Rob Kelley down at Florida State.

With the looming Christmas holiday and my recent interest in trumpet endurance practice sessions (currently up to 12 minutes per day), I thought it'd be fun to do an amateur recording session of this piece. I'm no Kelley Corbett but I still remember which buttons to press.

I recorded this over two days in my home studio (the office with the door closed), using the Roland SC-8850 for the accompaniment and Adobe Audition for the mixing. Enjoy!

From the liner notes: Badinage is an abstract work that started out as a series of major seventh chords. My last trumpet and piano work was deeply emotional and almost programmatic in nature, so this was my attempt at a song on the opposite end of the spectrum. I started writing it as a possible first movement to a Sonata, but eventually realized that it worked much better as a tightly cohesive single movement work. The word "badinage" is French and describes a playful banter. In this instance, both the trumpet and piano share the spotlight with equal importance.