Hill Country Miniatures for 8-part Trombone Ensemble was written by Richard J. Lawn in 2002 for the Trombone Choir at the University of Texas and its director Nathaniel Brickens. The work is dedicated to Donald Knaub its former director. It has become a staple in the American Trombone Ensemble repertoire since its original release. Mr. Lawn explains in the notes, his deep emotional connection to the Hill Country land and to his days at the Eastman School of Music, hearing the legendary Trombone Choir led by Emory Remington and following through to his days at the University of Texas with Knaub and Brickens, all of which inspired him to compose this work.

This music is about 15 minutes in length and is for advanced performers.

The four movements of the work are:

Hickory Cove - September 2001 - a lyrical, somber and solemn introductory movement.

Smithwick - a jaunty piece reflecting the Scottish and English heritage of this tiny Texas spot.

The Narrows - As part of the Colorado River narrows, it twists and turns its way through the Texas Hill Country. You can hear the gentle waters winding through the cliffs and slopes.

Blue Bonnet Boogie - The springtime brings a profusion of the Blue Bonnet, the Texas state flower. A sea of these swaying in the breeze brings out the good old down-home boogie-woogie! A jazz solo featuring Bass Trombone (written for Bill Reichenbach in mind) with solo written out or improvised using chord symbols adds a festive finish.

Cherry Classics is proud to be the new distributor of this great work.

Dimensión is a tango that wascomposed based on two simple piano pieces destined to young pianists: the firsttheme is "Langostango" andthe second one "Continuando".When joining to build up "Dimensión",additional elements came into the game, such as an important secondary melodyand a few transitions.

Dimensión is therefore a clearexample of a successful composition: a couple of good ideas and a lot of workto achieve that nobody notices how much work lies behind it.

About the title, it obeys to my (slightly excessive) concerntowards finding names that can be understood in any language of the places Iusually am related to (i.e. in Spanish, English and German). In the case of "dimensión"it is a transparent word, understandingas such the words that are practically identical in any language while keepingtheir meaning (there exist words that are quite similar in different languages,but mean different things, in Linguistics these are called false friends.) Among my titles one finds several of such transparent words.

In September 2002 I began to conductthe Orquesta No Típica at theUniversity of Bremen, Germany, a chamber group of variable instrumentationdevoted to tango music. Dimensión wasthe first piece that I composed especially for this group, in January /February 2003. The original version of Dimensiónis therefore for Sextet: flute, clarinet, violin, guitar, bass,piano.

Sincethat first version (performed several times in Germany and Argentina) I wrote along dozen of arrangements for different instrumental groups.



Dimensión for trombone octet: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8Uq4_PSlPI