SKU: HL.48024317

ISBN 9780851626932. UPC: 888680748180. 9.0x12.0x0.35 inches. Ed. Edward Huws Jones Book/CD Pack.

Edward Huws Jones' popular series of traditional fiddle repertoire, now available with expertly-recorded audio CD. Containing colorful instrumental backing tracks and full demonstrations, the new audio resource will aid and inspire your private practice and public performance alike. These generous collections of authentic music, some familiar, some more exotic, but all of it faithfully arranged, enable you to create your own ceilidh, bluegrass club or charanga band. The violin edition includes optional easy violin part and guitar chords, while the complete edition also includes both keyboard and violin accompaniments. Either format is highly flexible, which means the music can be played as solos, duets or trios as well as with larger ensembles. Edwards Huws Jones has travelled extensively researching fiddle-playing traditions. In each book he explains the background of the particular musical style, giving his own suggestions for a lively performance.

SKU: FP.FPT05

ISBN 9790570504275.

Thomas Pitfield had a gift for memorable tunes, often couched in somewhat French-sounding harmonic and decorative idiom. He admired Vaughan Williams, Grainger and Delius and their influence can be felt in his works.

This second violin sonata has been long unpublished, but is now released by Forsyth Publishing to mark 25 years since his passing in 1999 and the publication of a new biography of his life.

SKU: HL.14011290

ISBN 9780853604495. 8.25x11.75 inches.

The Fiddler’s Ten gradually introduces new elements to the student – new finger and key patterns, new bowing considerations, new rhythmic patterns. All pieces are playable in first position, though use of other positions may be employed to enhance performance. This is an invaluable teaching tool and guaranteed to provide interest for the pupil.Michael Rose is a British composer, conductor and educator who was formerly Music Advisor for Bedfordshire and brings creativity, energy and decades of teaching wisdom to his publications for music students.

SKU: PR.164002390

UPC: 680160038091.

I became interested in the work of Plato through my friend and collaborator, the writer and philosopher Paul Woodruff. Paul's new translation, with Alexander Nehamas, of the Symposium gave me insights into ancient Greek ways of thinking about Love, Beauty, and Wisdom -- and managed to keep the earthy, and often bawdy side of it all in full view. But their new translation of Plato's later dialogue Phaedrus went even further: the beauty of the speeches is breathtaking, and the discourse itself is enough to keep one awake at night. Basically the Great Speech of Socrates in the Phaedrus dialogue has to do with the place of Eros in the world, and with the conflict in the soul between fleshly pleasure and philosophic discovery. I will not attempt to encapsulate this brilliant discourse in a program note: suffice it to say that reading it gave rise to my two-sided work for clarinet, violin, and piano, Phaedrus. The first movement represents the Philosophic life, and is thus subtitled Apollo's Lyre (Invocation and Hymn). It begins with an unaccompanied melody for the clarinet, which (after a pair of harp-like flourishes for the piano, expands into an accompanied canon. The voices in the dialogue (clarinet and violin) follow each other by a prescribed number of beats, but the music is totally devoid of any meter at all. The piano, representing the lyre, accompanies this lyric love-feast with repeated strummed chords. The canon has three large sections, and ends with violin echoing the unaccompanied clarinet invocation as the sound of the lyre fades. The second movement, called Dionysus' Dream-Orgy (Ritual Dance) presents, after a brief introduction, another kind of unmetered music. Rather than long lyric flights of philosophic song, however, this time we hear a unison dance of unbridled energy and sensual transport. The piece soon forms itself into a loose arch form, with contrasting metered dance sections divided by the unison unmetered orgy tune. Midway through the movement, Apollo's melody returns from the first movement, but it is a temporary reminiscence. The orgiastic dance returns, reaches a climax, and ends with a stomping of feet. While Plato asserts that a proper balance between lust and reason is necessary in all men, he (naturally) gives the nod to Philosophy as the better choice in which to live. Not so in my music: the two sides are meant to coexist and to complement each other. No sides are taken. Phaedrus was commissioned of the Verdehr Trio by Michigan State University. It is dedicated to the Vedehr Trio with great affection and admiration.

SKU: CF.MXE71

ISBN 9781491144749. UPC: 680160902248. 9 x 12 inches.

The day that Australian and New Zealand forces joined the Allies for an invasion of the Gallipoli Peninsula of Turkey in World War I, with disastrous consequences, is celebrated in Australia as Anzac Day (Australian and New Zealand Army Corps). To honor this special day, Bresnick takes inspiration from two selected poems by Bertolt Brecht (And I Always Thought and Legend of the Unknown Soldier Beneath the Triumphal Arch). Commissioned to commemorate Australia’s Anzac Day, similar to Memorial Day, and inspired by two Brecht poems…The somber opening violin and clarinet lines unfolded to haunting effect before eventually reaching a fervent climax. --Vivien Schweitzer, The New York Times.