''Khan Variations'' is a musical composition for 5 octave marimba written by

Alejandro Viñao Alejandro Viñao (born 4 September 1951) is an Argentinian composer currently living in the United Kingdom. Life and career Viñao studied musical composition in Buenos Aires with the composer Jacobo Ficher. In 1976 he was awarded a British Counc ...

in 2001. The piece was commissioned by twelve percussion educators, including

Michael Burritt Michael may refer to: People * Michael (given name) Michael is a usually masculine given name derived from the Hebrew phrase ''mī kāʼēl'', 'Who slike-El', in Aramaic: ܡܝܟܐܝܠ (''Mīkhāʼēl'' ). The theophoric name is a rhetoric ...

Nancy Zeltsman Nancy Zeltsman (born 1958) is an international marimba soloist who has taught at the Boston Conservatory and Berklee College of Music since 1993. Biography Zeltsman was born in 1958 in Morristown, New Jersey. In 1976, Zeltsman studied with Vi ...

Robert van Sice Robert van Sice is an American percussionist and marimba player. He has toured and recorded extensively, currently teaches at the Yale School of Music (where he was appointed Director of Percussion Studies in 1997) and the Peabody Conservatory of ...

, and

Gordon Stout Gordon Stout (born 1952) is an American percussionist, composer, and educator specializing in the marimba. He studied composition with Joseph Schwantner, Samuel Adler, and Warren Benson, and percussion with James Salmon and John Beck. Many of ...

. It is structured as an uninterrupted set of 8 rhythmic

variations Variation or Variations may refer to: Science and mathematics * Variation (astronomy), any perturbation of the mean motion or orbit of a planet or satellite, particularly of the moon * Genetic variation, the difference in DNA among individuals ...

lasting approximately 10 minutes and is considered one of the most challenging works in the marimba repertoire, both from a technical and musical point of view. The piece has featured in the repertoire of many international marimba competitions such as the International Marimba Competition, the Taiwan Marimba Competition, and the

Percussive Arts Society Percussive Arts Society (PAS) is a non-profit organization for professional percussionists and percussion educators. It was founded in 1961 in the United States and has over 5,000 members in 40 American chapters, with another 28 chapters abroad. It ...

marimba competition. ''Khan Variations'' has been recorded by a number of artists and was featured on the album ''Percussive Counterpoint'' by Svet Stoyanov.

References

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External links

Performance
by Ian Rosenbaum as part of the Marimba Literature Library by Vic Firth Pitched percussion instruments 21st-century classical music Compositions for marimba