Over the years I have written quite a few arrangements and original compositions for the various ensembles I’ve played with. A bunch of them are for viola or violin with guitar and either recorder or Irish whistle, written over the several years I was performing with Acoustic Cadence folk trio. Others are for viola and piano, played at church with my friend Christina at the piano. There are several simple string trios and quartets based on Christmas carols or other church hymns, written for me to play with the young people at church (two of whom are my violin students). Over the summer I also wrote an arrangement of an Irish song for viola and small pipes. That was a blast! Small pipes are like bagpipes except that you can play them indoors without making everyone go deaf and there is a chance that other instruments can be heard at the same time. It’s a neat instrument, with or without drone, and a 9-note range that is basically a scale in A Mixolydian with an extra G at the bottom. I have a piper friend, Lori, whom I’ve wanted to play with for a long time and finally had the time and the opportunity to write something for us. Hopefully there will be a lot more to come for this combination. It sounded great! Then there is the viola choir my sister-in-law Kate is working on starting up in Las Vegas, her new home. She is now the viola professor on the faculty at UNLV, and the viola choir will include her students and anyone in the community who would like to participate. She asked me to write some stuff for them to play. And so I now have four pieces for viola choir. Since I had time on my hands this summer with students gone on vacation, I took some time to set myself up to sell sheet music (PDFs) of some of these arrangements and compositions. It’s not simple and straightforward, since a lot of these pieces are “incomplete”. I wrote them with particular people in mind, and so they are strewn with things like “play anything you want here” and some chords because I knew that anything Christina came up with in the moment would be better than I could write for her. So I’ve gone back through several and “finished” them so anyone could play them. Those that are ready are now posted under the “Sheet Music” tab on my website. Click on the links to hear them on SoundCloud (just midi files at this point, not live performances yet). If you’re interested in purchasing any, contact me. I’ll send you the music as a PDF.
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AuthorQuodlibet: A piece employing several well-known tunes from various sources, performed either simultaneously or in succession. (Schirmer Pocket Manual of Musical Terms) Archives
September 2022
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