The Wobbly Unicycle: Bells
By Timothy Loest
Grade: 2
Item: 98-PC-DB1541_B
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Description
Experience musical vertigo like you’ve never experienced before! This whimsical work depicts the humorous movement of an inexperienced unicyclist, whose comical ride is captured through the clever use of chromaticism, dissonance, and whole tone passages. Steeped in pure fun, this imaginative and entertaining piece is sure to put a smile on everyone’s face. Hold onto your seats - it’s going to be one wild ride!
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Additional Details
Series:
FJH Concert Band
Publisher:
The FJH Music Company, Inc.
SKU:
98-PC-DB1541_B
More about this title
About the Composer: Timothy Loest
Timothy Loest has spent over three decades in the classroom while building an international reputation for compositions and arrangements that balance musicality with accessibility. His works appear regularly on state and national festival programs, and his music has reached audiences far beyond the concert hall, from Chicago's Millennium Park to network television broadcasts including The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon and Good Morning America. In 2017, the Illinois Grade School Music Association recognized his contributions to music education with the Cloyd Myers Memorial Award for Excellence.
Loest's influence extends through pedagogical collaborations as well. He has contributed to several widely adopted band methods, including Measures of Success and the Warm-ups and Beyond series, and in 2022 founded Fanfare Music Press to publish high-quality compositions and arrangements for band. A graduate of Illinois State University and Northwestern University, he holds membership in ASCAP and maintains an active commission practice for band repertoire.
Why we love this
Loest captures the physical comedy of a wobbly ride through genuinely inventive harmonic language without resorting to novelty clichés. The chromaticism and whole tone passages feel compositionally earned, making this fun to conduct and substantive enough to hold the interest of musicians who care about harmonic language. It's the rare Grade 2 piece that entertains audiences while asking your band to engage with real musical ideas.
What to expect
A delightfully unstable journey through musical space. The piece teeters between harmonic comfort and dissonant chaos, using chromatic runs and whole tone passages to capture the physical sensation of barely staying upright. It's humorous without being cartoonish, and clever without being condescending.
Who it's for
Grade 2 concert bands seeking a crowd-pleasing opener or closer with genuine musical substance. This works equally well for festival performances, full concert programs, or adjudicated events where you want to signal that your group can handle both technique and character.
How to get the most out of it
- Embrace the rhythmic wobbliness in your conducting pattern. Slight rubato and dynamic inflation on the chromatic runs will enhance the comedy without losing clarity.
- Balance humor with precision. Articulation cleanness on dissonant passages will make the harmonic character land harder than if the notes blur together.
- Let the whole tone sections breathe. These passages are moments of musical vertigo for the listener; resist rushing through them.
- Use the full dynamic range the score offers. The contrast between moments of relative stability and wild chromatic movement is what sells the narrative.
How to use it
Position this as a palate cleanser in the middle of your concert, where the energy shift and good humor give audiences a moment to reset before moving into heavier repertoire. It also works beautifully as a closing concert piece, sending people out with laughter and a sense that your band doesn't take itself too seriously.
Skills your students will build
- Intonation control in chromatic passages
- Whole tone scale reading and execution
- Musical characterization and programmatic interpretation
- Dynamic contrast and articulation precision
- Ensemble balance in dissonant harmonic contexts