Maecenas Wind Bands & Ensembles

Recommendations

by Tim Reynish
for Schools, Music Centres and Community Bands

In this selection of works I have included three major works, which are already classics in their own time and which a good high school band would enjoy tackling. Martin Ellerby’s  Paris Sketchesis a score full of film music effects with many quirks and suprises (rhythmical and melodic) of a type also found in Adam Gorb’s  Yiddish Dances and Stephen McNeff’s  Ghosts. Incidentally, the individual movements of all these three works can stand on their own as independent concert pieces.

In Song of Lir, Fergal Carroll has achieved the difficult feat of writing a seven minute piece at AB Grade 3 which keeps players interested, whilst Bill Connor’s  Tails aus dem Voods Viennoise goes further, providing Grade 3 – 4 groups with the experience of Mahlerian textures and emotional content in a twenty two minute work of great beauty and intensity. Edwin Roxburgh equals this feat by writing at about Grade 4 (Times Harvest) which is cast in a contemporary language suitable for the London Sinfonietta. The WASBE schools commission for 2003 from Marco Putz resulted in Dance Sequence, a fascinating three movement work which is never sentimental. Finally at Grade 3 – 4 Michael Ball’s  Saxophone Concertoand Adam Gorb’s  Euphonium Concerto cleverly pit a virtuoso solo part against an easier orchestral accompaniment. Why not try them?

Enjoy!

Recommendations II

It is hard to believe that my last list of recommendations was made four years ago, such a lot has happened in the interim. There are now over 160 scores and sets of parts in our catalogue, and most of them can be heard in full concert performances on our website, an incredible resource at all levels from Grade 1½ to professional. Here are some of my favorites from our most recent publications.

Nine works for beginner bands

An innovation in the last few years has been our genesis series, providing everything beginner bands require: original music by quality composers at AB Grade 1.5 / American Grade 2.5 or less in a wide variety of styles, scored, cued and doubled for almost any combination of instruments, number and ability range of players, with generous quantities of parts and at affordable prices. I like Fergal Carroll's  Dance of the Fir Darrigwith its echoes of Riverdance and his Piper of Braffertonreminds me of his Song of Lirthat wonderful piece that sounds like a melancholy folk-like tune. Malcolm Binney has contributed the gently lyrical Nancy's Lamentand I enjoy the ebullience of Shaftoe'sHoedown.  Adam Gorb's triptych Treason and Plot, With Fire and Sword and Back from the Warsbrings a note of the renaissance to the junior band and finally at this level, the quirky character of Gareth Wood's March of the Orcsis great fun. But it's worth listening to all 18 of them to find what ‘rings your bell'.

Eight works for bands with a little more experienced

Perhaps even more exciting is the number of works at about American Grade 3 - 4 level which are real pieces, works which can be played by any band in any situation as concert works of quality. My favorite isPassacaglia, by Timothy Jackson, I commissioned this after hearing the original as the finale of a Symphony for 32 horns, I immediately thought of it in wind band terms, it is a wonderful piece of sustained writing with an extraordinary climax. Three works at this level by Adam Gorb are very welcome, the slow movement of his Trombone Concerto, Downtown Blues, real mood music, and his Singapore piece Sunrise and Safari, a ‘Ravelian' start to the day interrupted by birdsong and a safari trip complete with trumpeting elephants, screaming monkeys and hissing snakes. Finally, Tranquility,an exercise in peaceful, low dynamics with some simple singing and a reminder of the pathos behind man's inhumanity to man. Bells toll and under muted brass and we hear simple aleatoric bird-song in the woodwind. Another of my commissions has also just been published, Deep Soul Divingby award-winning Emily Howard, a tripartite waltz with some energetic writing for all. There's also a suite of light music of the sort we used to hear on the BBC Light Programme in the fifties and sixties, Terence Greave's  Werneth Suite, really good tunes amusingly scored. Finally a work from our newest composer Daniel Basford; his Songs and Refrainsis a four movement suite which can also be played and purchased as separate movements; Arkendale will whet your appetite as a starter.

Four works from the "Celtic Fringe"

At a more advanced level, a slightly revised version of one of my earliest commissions, Matthew Taylor's  Blasket Dances, a sea-scape with Irish folk-songs and a ceilidh worthy of Malcolm Arnold. Three further works redolent of Celtic high spirits have also been published recently. The 'Variations and Fugue on the Wee Cooper of Fife'byCedric Thorpe Davie has taken thirty years to get into print, but with its catchy tunes and infectious cross rhythms it's bound to be a rapid favorite. Fergal Carroll once again wonderfully exploits the fund of Irish folk melody with his Tipperary Rhapsody and William Sweeney casts a nostalgic look at the hills and lochs of Scotland in Lost  Mountain.

Final Choices

 Tim Reynish

The Recommendations listing produced the following results: