The Stars Began to Burn by Matthew Gillott

The Stars Began to Burn by Matthew Gillot was written during the spring/summer of 2021 in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. The title of the piece was taken from a line in Mary Oliver’s poem “The Journey.” Gillott’s intent for the piece was to capture the emotional experience he felt while reading the poem which he described as “the ecstatic rush of replacing habitual self-doubt with self-confidence.”

The Stars Began to Burn is a delightful percussion ensemble work that takes students through various time signatures and metric pulses, techniques, and keys and is accessible to a wide range of playing abilities. It begins with a duple feel before moving into a 12/8 triplet pulse for the majority of the work. This is a great opportunity to enhance students’ confidence with 12/8 time signatures.