Guitar (flatpick/plectrum) - Intermediate

SKU: MB.95696

Composed by David Grisman. Squareback saddle stitch. Acoustic Disc Records. Bluegrass and Country. Book. 88 pages. Mel Bay Publications, Inc #95696. Published by Mel Bay Publications, Inc (MB.95696).

ISBN 9780786616572. UPC: 796279028691. 8.75 x 11.75 inches. By David Grisman and Tony Rice, transcribed by John Carlini.

In 1994, Acoustic Disc issued a landmark CD by David Grisman and Tony Rice. The central idea behind the album called for the artists to play a different vintage mandolin or guitar on each cut. On this remarkable recording, David and Tony perform 17 original compositions on a wide range of vintage instruments. Mel Bay Publications, Inc., is proud to present this guitar edition and a separate mandolin edition of Tone Poems, both transcribed by noted guitarist/arranger John Carlini. All 17 solos in each book are written in notation and tablature.

Guitar

SKU: FG.55011-071-7

Hommage to Paul Klee. Composed by Kai Nieminen. Fennica Gehrman #55011-071-7. Published by Fennica Gehrman (FG.55011-071-7).

ISBN 9790550110717.

Completed in Karstula, Finland during late July 2010, this carefully structured, but also free-ranging work is drawn from ideas for a much earlier work in four movements, Fantasy dating from the 1980s.
Kai Nieminen has been for a long time an admirer of the work of artist Paul Klee (1879-1940), and the solo presented in its final form here is influenced by the painting Dances caused by Fear or as it is often refered to Dancing from Fear painted towards the end of Klee's life in Bern, 1938.
Having left Germany for Switzerland in December 1933, Klee's later works were often full of signs and lines, very often represented in black, depicting human figures or various objects against a variety of coloured backgrounds, in the case of this painting of a brownish hue. This development in his painting style and technique is felt by some to be an effect perhaps of his long-term illness, systemic sclerosis, but in the case of Dances caused by Fear there is suggested an atmosphere of panic and terror, an attempt to escape from horrors to come (World War II), represented in the violent movement of the arms and legs of the figures, and the dark, indeed brooding nature of the colours.
In Kai Nieminen's guitar work Images of Fear, there is only a very brief passage of calm at the very beginning, after which come three main connected sections in which a wide range of musically unsettling ideas emerge one by one, making use of the tritone, minor seconds, glissandos, tamboura, campanella, etc. The third and final section incorporates the grouping of 5 sixteenth-notes, to give an uneasy feeling to the music, with a short haunting and pleading five-note phrase (Cantando) heard immediately following this passage, before the work ends with further glissandos, and distant and diminishing harmonics.
As with Kai Nieminen's other guitar works, the use of 'orchestral colour' is vital to the performance, and passages suggestive of for example brass, strings, woodwind, etc., should be taken into account and played with suitably considered contrast of tone.

John Mills.

Guitar; Methods and Music for Children

SKU: UT.CH-157

Composed by Giorgio Signorile. Saddle stitching. Classical. Score and Parts. 40 pages. Ut Orpheus #CH 157. Published by Ut Orpheus (UT.CH-157).

ISBN 9790215320369. 9 x 12 inches.

Vals d'la Masca; Il racconto della Montagna; Sequenze sotterranee

The Alpinia Suite was commissioned and composed for the festival <> and is dedicated to my friend and colleague Elio Galvagno. It was performed for the first time on August 30, 2011, in the Church of San Giovanni in Saluzzo, by an ensemble of professional and student guitarists from all over Europe. This piece was written to commemorate the first ascent of mount Monviso, by William Mathews, Frederick Jacomb, Jean Baptiste Croz and Michel Croz, exactly 150 years before, on August 30, 1861.
The first movement is a small Waltz. I imagined a Masca (a sort of alpine pixie, a teasing sprite), dancing all around the house and playing tricks, mostly harmless and funny. The Masca is a legendary and very important character in the folklore of my valleys, and all rationally inexplicable events of everyday life are ascribed to her - such as objects that cannot be found anymore, holes in flour sacks, salt in sugar bowls...
The next two movements are a homage to the Mountains. The Tale is a sort of journal, a bright and peaceful chronicle of a hike uphill, in which the beauty of the place is highlighted by an easy harmony and a sweet melody. After this, Underground sequences evokes that same world in a darker and nocturnal way; the faster pace and the choice of repeated and varying patterns are meant to show the transformation of the former environment into something more complex and tormented. Here mountains are a metaphor of human life, warts and all: their sundrenched slopes and their green pasture grasslands, but also their icy and dangerous northern sides, which demand calm, training and caution.
(G. Signorile).