Alex Shapiro, composer: Transplant

Transplant

(Organ).
Total duration ca. 4 minutes (1999)
Published by Activist Music (ASCAP).
Commissioned in 1999 by organist Frances Nobert.
One movement work. 7 pages, 8.5" x 11".

Premiered in October 2000 in Claremont, CA. by Frances Nobert.

Also available as:

Transplanted

(Viola and Harpsichord).
Total duration ca. 4 minutes (2012)
Published by Activist Music (ASCAP).
Commissioned in 2012 by Sherwin Abrams, for Kathleen McIntosh.
One movement work. 17 pages, 8.5" x 11".

View page one of the score
Listen to a demo of this piece
Purchase this score Score available from Activist Music: $18.00 print; $8.00 digital.

When organist Frances Nobert first commissioned this work for one of her upcoming concerts, I asked her to describe the other pieces on her program and to think about what she might like to add that would provide contrast. After some thought, she responded with "a quiet scherzo." My mischievous mind took off, and not too much later I presented her with Transplant, which can probably best be described by the suggestion, "imagine the Three Stooges performing open heart surgery." Much of the pipe organ literature is beautiful but ponderously serious; here's a slightly offbeat piece that probably won't sound like anything else on the program.

"Transplant... was playful, enterprising, and as engagingly refreshing as the composer herself... This very playful, tongue-in-cheek work has a theme which returns with scale passages that overlap in rapid-fire fashion. It was a great pleasure to hear a work that doesn't take itself too seriously and yet delivers a refreshing and unique taste while incorporating an improvisational sense of flourish."

— Carol Worthey, IAWM Journal, 2008

Email Alex for the access code
to download a perusal score!