Tiger Dance

In creating this unique new work for young bucket bands, we have a couple of major intentions. In the short term, we wanted to give you a way to celebrate the Year of the Tiger in the Chinese calendar if you wish. However, we also wanted to create a contemporary concert work that is fun to play any time of year. It is fine with a spring school concert and equally good for an ensemble competition.

In a few places in the work, there are openings to feature the bucket band. Find ways of highlighting these sections any way you can, with lighting, or players moving forward – whatever works. And at the end, after the last notes, let them put their arms up in a V for a dramatic finish.

Note that several times on the background tracks there are tiger roars. These are at strategic points and at the end of the work. You may choose to perform this with just effects heard as is, or you may choose to have your students join the effects with their own roars. We would especially encourage you to let them roar along with the final tiger roar.

To help them learn their parts, or just to listen for inspiration, we have created a student percussion version of this tune. We have also extracted the individual student parts and put the PDFs online for you to download as needed. You can find all of the above at our web site, free to subscribers.