SKU: AP.36-52710444

ISBN 9781633610644. UPC: 679360734711. English.

In this second volume of perennial wedding favorites, we are proud to offer selections to expand your repertoire and enhance these celebratory occasions. Violinists must be comfortable playing through fifth position, and the piano accompaniment is moderately difficult.

These products are currently being prepared by a new publisher. While many items are ready and will ship on time, some others may see delays of several months.

SKU: B5.2136TCD

ISBN 9790570276196.

SKU: MB.30957M

ISBN 9781513466101. 8.75 x 11.75 inches.

This collection shows a wide variety of musical approaches in open and alternate tunings. The arrangements come from the playing of Davey Graham, Pat Kirtley, Tony McManus, John Renbourn, John Fahey, Sandy Shalk, Dave Evans, Martin Carthy, El McMeen, Leo Wijnkamp and Stefan Grossman. The music ranges from the medieval La Rotta to Willie Brown?s Future Blues from the deep Mississippi delta; from O?Carolan?s Lord Inchiquin to Waterbound, an old-time folksong. From Celtic airs and jigs to gospel and blues you will explore the world of tunings. Hopefully, this collection will help you to discover new approaches and techniques to playing your instrument. Along the way you?ll have fingerpicking challenges and fun.

SKU: PE.EP72822

ISBN 9790577011769. 232 x 303mm inches. English.

I have only visited Damascus once, twenty years ago, on the way to Palmyra.  I had a purpose (I was writing music for a play about Palmyra’s Queen Zenobia) but essentially I was a tourist.  Like any visitor, I was thrilled to step out of the noisy modern city into the magical ancient world of the walled Old City, its vibrant souk leading to the magnificent mosque, and a labyrinth of winding, narrow streets filled with the smell of unleavened bread.

In Palmyra, I was met with extraordinary kindness everywhere.  On one occasion, a little Bedouin boy noticed that I was risking sunstroke wandering bare-headed among the spectacular ruins: he showed me how to tie a turban, then took me to have tea with his family in their tent.

Since then, I have watched helplessly as these places of wonder have been devastated and their inhabitants scattered and killed.  When the Sacconi Quartet suggested that I might choose a Syrian poet for our collaboration, I welcomed the idea.

I searched for a long time to find a contemporary poet whose work might gain from any music I could imagine.  I felt it was important to find first-hand accounts of the Syrian experience – but, of course, I was always reading them in translation.  In an anthology called Syria Speaks, I was astonished to read something that looked like prose, but was full of poetry.  It was Anne-Marie McManus’s fine translation of Ali Safar’s A Black Cloud in a Leaden White Sky – an eloquent, thoughtful, contained yet vivid account of life in a war-torn country, all the more moving for its restraint.

In setting these words, I have not attempted to imitate Syrian music.  However, there is what might be called a linguistic accommodation in my choice of scale, or mode.  Several movements are in a mode that I first discovered while writing a cantata commemorating the First World War: it has a tuning that I associate with war, its violence and desolation.  This eight-note mode is similar to scales found in Syrian music.  I did not choose it in the abstract: it emerged from the harmonies I was exploring in the earlier work, and emerged again as I was looking for the right musical colours to set Ali Safar’s words.  In this work, its Arabic aspect is more prominent. - Jonathan Dove