Results
-
£25.00...and the winter moon rises
Description...and the winter moon riseswas inspired by a winter's evening car journey across the Pennines from Manchester to Huddersfield, through the brass band heartland of Saddleworth. There was recent snow on the ground, and the sun had just set. A bright clear moon was rising into a sky coloured with orange from the setting sun, and the moonlight made all the snow and ice sparkle.The work is the fourth movement of a larger 5 movement suite entitled "North!", but can be (and has been) performed in isolation. This work was a finalist in the 2012 Ohio Brass Arts Festival composition competition.Performance NotesThe percussion parts should be playable by three players; the "arco" parts of the vibraphone parts should be played by drawing a cello or double bass bow up the side of the bar. Motors should be left off throughout.Three of the brass players are asked to double on triangles for the first part of the piece; ideally these should be of different sizes giving clearly different sounds. The easiest solution is to tie a triangle to the music stand, rather than try to hold it and then swap instruments later in the piece.Click below to watch a playback preview of the score!
Estimated dispatch 7-14 working days
-
£35.00strange geometry
Descriptionstrange geometrywas commissioned by Morgan Griffiths and the Hammonds Saltaire Band for their performance at the Brass in Concert Championships of 2015.As a bit of a space/sci-fi geek, as well as a musician, two events during the summer of 2015 had a particular effect on me. The first was the tragic early death in a plane crash of the famous film composer James Horner. Horner's music, particularly in films like 'Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan', 'Avatar', 'Apollo 13' and even his debut in Roger Corman's 1980 budget film 'Battle Beyond the Stars', defined for a generation the sound of sci-fi at the cinema. Along with John Williams he created the vocabulary for those who wish to express other-worldly wonder in music and his inventive talent will be much missed in an industry where originality has become something of a dirty word in recent years.The second event was the epic flyby of Pluto by the NASA New Horizons spacecraft. There are many reasons to find this mission inspiring - for example, the scientists and engineers behind it created a craft that has travelled at 37,000 mph for nine years and three billion miles to arrive within seventy-two seconds of the predicted time for the flyby. That they achieved this with such accuracy is an outstanding tribute to humanity's ingenuity and insatiable curiosity. However, the most exciting aspect of the mission was the clear, high resolution pictures of this unthinkably remote and inhospitable world beamed back to mission control. The best previous image of Pluto was an indistinct fuzzy blob - suddenly we could see mountains made of ice, glaciers of methane and carbon monoxide and nitrogen fog - features previously unimagined on a world thought to be a slightly dull ball of cold rock. The BBC's venerable astronomy programme 'The Sky at Night' waxed lyrical about these newly discovered features, referring to "the surprising discoveries of mountains and strange geometry on the surface of this cold distant world".I like to think that Horner would have been as inspired as I have been by this real-life science story, and this piece uses some of the vocabulary of the sci-fi movie soundtrack in a tribute to the memory of a great musician and to the inspirational geeks at NASA who have boldly taken us where no-one has gone before.Note: This work comes with a B4 portrait score. Listen to a preview and follow the music below!
Estimated dispatch 7-14 working days
-
£7.50gemini
Descriptiongeminiis a virtuosicsolo for unaccompanied cornet or trumpet, inspired by the constellation of the same name and one of a small sequence of works inspired by the composer's love of astronomy.Gemini is a constellation visible in the night sky overhead in January and February, between Taurus, Cancer and Auriga. Gemini is latin for "twins", as the constellation's two brightest stars represent the mythological twins Castor and Pollux. Bizarrely, despite being twins, Castor and Pollux had two different fathers and hence two different fates and personalities. This work is dedicated to the composer's friend Lizzy Tonge. The opening melody takes its outline from the song 'Thank You' by Dido.Listen to an audio preview while following the music below:
Estimated dispatch 7-14 working days
-
£35.00
Sentinel - Peter Meechan
Sentinel was written in the summer of 2010 and follows on from another work by the composer, The Karman Line - a piece which describes the point where the earthas atmosphere ends and Outer Space begins.Sentinel goes further into space and takes the idea that the stars are somehow guardians of the sky that we can see, and Space further beyond.The opening section, which prominently features metallic percussion and broad melodies, portrays the grand open space that the stars inhabit. The middle, slower, section is more reflective depicting the isolation of Space, before we hear a reprise of the first section as the finale.Sentinel was written for the 2011 National Youth Brass Band Championships of Great Britain.
Estimated dispatch 12-14 working days
-
£69.95
STARMAKER (Brass Band Set) - Ray Steadman-Allen
Described by the composer as one of his more ambitious works for brass band, this work is in three movements. Although each movement is capable of standing alone, the composer's own concept is totality with the three movements forming a composite whole. Starmaker presents in music the concept of God's creation of the universe. The frantic and sometimes harsh music of the first movement portrays the chaos from which the immortal and invisible wisdom of God created the order and structure of the heavens, with the stars and planets in their ordered places. An exquisite second movement, based on the benediction 'Now the day is over', brings a calm and ordered peace to the universe, also reminding listeners of the night sky, when God's amazing work is best viewed in all its awesome wonder. The final movement is celebratory in nature, with fragments of melodies like 'Praise to the Lord, the Almighty, the King of creation' appearing in various guises.
Estimated dispatch 7-14 working days
View Music