SKU: PR.114418600

ISBN 9781491111543. UPC: 680160642656.

Telemann for Two Volume I, Fantasias 1-6 arranged for Two FlutesWhat could be more delightful than playing Telemann duets, or playing the Telemann Fantasias? Sharon Sparrow and Jeffery Zook have created a remarkable set of duet adaptations of the Fantasias,sounding as if Telemann himself had composed them as two-part inventions. The original Telemann works are shared between the two players, mixed with counterpoint to enhance the authentic solo works. The result is equally suitable for formal recitals and recreational duet playing! The present publication includes two performance scores of their settings of Fantasias 1-6, with a Volume II to include Fantasias 7-12.______________________________________Text from the scanned back cover:SHARON SPARROW is Assistant Principal Flute of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. She began musical studies on piano at age four, but it was the flute that led her to the Juilliard School for a Bachelor degree with Julius Baker. She received her Master’s degree with Thomas Nyfenger at the Mannes College of Music. Sharon’s professional career began in the Memphis Symphony, followed by tenured positions in the Fort Wayne Philharmonic and Detroit Symphony, and guest positions in the Hong Kong Philharmonic, Baltimore, Chicago, and Pittsburgh Symphonies. In 2016, Presser published her successful audition training book, 6 Weeks to Finals, and she is a much sought after coach for audition candidates across the country, as well as a frequent Master Class clinician at major schools including Boston University and Peabody Conservatory.JEFFERY ZOOK has been a member of the Detroit Symphony since1992. His formal musical studies began at Interlochen and continued at University of Michigan and the Royal Academy of Music in London. His teachers have included William Bennett and Trevor Wye. A prize winner in the NFA Young Artists Competition, Mr. Zook made his solo debut with the Detroit Symphony as a senior in high school, and has since performed all the Vivaldi concerti with them. He has recorded extensively for MusicMinus One and performed frequently at NFA conventions, including the concerto gala in 2017. Mr. Zook has served on the faculty at University of Michigan and Oakland University. In 2002 Zook and Sharon Sparrow founded the Detroit Flute Connection, a series of masterclasses for flutists.

SKU: PR.44641192L

UPC: 680160610860. 11 x 14 inches.

One of my greatest pleasures in writing a concerto is exploring the new world that opens for me each time I enter the sometimes alien, but always fascinating, world of a solo instrument or instruments. For me, the challenge is to discover the deepest nature of the solo instrument (its karma, if you will) and to allow that essential character to guide the shape and form of the work and the nature of the interaction between soloists and orchestra. In recent years, many of us have become more aware of the musical world outside the Western tradition of musics that follow different procedures and spring from other aesthetics. And contemporary percussionists have opened many of these worlds to us, as they have ventured around the globe, participating in Brazilian Samba schools, studying Gamelan and African drumming with local experts, collecting instruments from Asia and Africa and South America and the South Pacific, widening our horizons in the process. I will never forget our first meeting in Toronto when Nexus invited me into their world of hundreds of exciting percussion instruments. The vast array of instruments in the collection of the Nexus ensemble is truly global in scope as well as offering a thrilling sound-universe. I was inspired by the incredible range of sound and moved by the fact that so many of these instruments were musical reflections of a spiritual dimension. After long consideration, I decided that it would not only be impossible, but even undesirable for this Western-tradition-steeped composer to attempt to use these instruments in a culturally authentic way. My goal was an existential kind of authenticity: searching instead for universal ideas that would be true to both myself and the performers while acknowledging the traditional uses of the instruments. Since many percussion instruments are associated with various kinds of ritual, I decided that I would allow that concept to shape my piece. Rituals is in four movements, each issuing from a ritual associated with percussion, but with the orchestral interaction providing an essential element in the musical form. I. Invocation alludes to the traditions of invoking the spirit of the instruments, or the gods, or the ancestors before performing. II. Ambulation moves from a processional, through march and dance to fantasy based on all three. III. Remembrances alludes to traditions of memorializing. IV. Contests progresses from friendly competition games, contests to a suggestion of a battle of big band drummers, to warlike exchanges. In the 2nd and 4th movements, another percussion tradition, improvisation, is employed. Written into these movements are a number of seeds for improvisation. Indications in the score call for the soloists to improvise in three different ways, marked A for percussion alone; marked B for percussion with and in response to the orchestra; and C where the percussionists are free to add and embellish the written parts. These improvisations should grow out of and embellish previous motives and gestures in the movement.

SKU: PR.114422360

ISBN 9781491133828. UPC: 680160683321. 9 x 12 inches.

Based on an Armenian troubadour song, I WILL NOT BE SAD IN THIS WORLD is a uniquely beautiful work for alto flute (or bass flute) accompanied by a pre-recorded audio track made purely from the composer’s own singing. The result is a fluid interplay between the live flute and the composer’s multi-tracked and processed vocal sonorities. The work was created for Marya Martin’s “Eight Visions” collection (published by Presser), and is now available as a single publication.
I will not be sad in this world is based on the song “Ashkharumes Akh Chim Kashil” by the legendary 18th-century Armenian troubadour Sayat Nova. The song is often played on the duduk, and your flute playing should respond to the ornamentation, intonation, and vibrato of traditional duduk playing.In playing this piece, you will want to be flexible with time: the 32nd notes are mostly notated grace notes coloring the following note, and can be compressed towards that next note for effect. Similarly, the meter should be downplayed: use the pre-recorded part to give you guideposts, and then shape your phrases quite freely around those guideposts.I strongly suggest that you listen to my demo recording of the piece, as it will give an indication of what I am looking for. I have not transcribed every note that I sang on the demo, and similarly, once you feel comfortable with the playing style, you can ornament the melody with some flexibility yourself. The notated turns are meant to indicate places where it is most natural to do some ornamentation.The piece can be played on either alto flute or bass flute. I am hoping for a certain vulnerability in your playing, so choose the flute that will help you most with that. If you are playing in a dry hall, you might consider slight amplification, not for volume, but to allow you to add reverb to your sound. It will then be easier to blend well with the tape part.Optionally, one (or even two) additional flutists may double the lines called “voice” that are part of the tape part. The additional player(s) should play more softly than the soloist, and get even softer as the piece progresses and the electronics take over.* * *Thanks to Marya Martin who commissioned the piece. Many thanks to my friend and colleague Margaret Lancaster, who tried out the piece for me and advised me about notation. Thanks also to the Civitella Ranieri Foundation who were my generous hosts while I was writing I will not be sad in this world.The audio accompaniment and the demo are available for free download from the “Additional Downloads” tab at www.presser.com/114-42236.

SKU: PR.11641139S

UPC: 680160682119.

Barcarolles for a Sinking City was inspired by the city of Venice, a place that has long held the fascination of artists, writers and composers, and which I have been lucky enough to visit on several occasions. Sadly it seems that future generations may not be so lucky: in addition to the city's slow sinking and recently discovered tilting, studies predict that if global warming and the resultant rise of ocean levels is unabated, the entire city (as well as many other coastal cities around the globe) will be under water by 2100.   I. Funeral Gondola The late, cryptic piano works of Franz Liszt made a profound impression on me as a young composer, among them two works he entitled La Lugubre Gondola (usually translated as The Funeral Gondola ) which were said to be a premonition of Wagner's death in Venice, his coffin transported through the canals in a black gondola. These late pieces of Liszt acquired even greater significance to me after I spent two summers in Bayreuth under the patronage of Friedelind Wagner, the granddaughter of Wagner and great-granddaughter of Liszt. This movement is a meditation on Wagner, Liszt, Venice and its own evanescence. II. Barcarolle/Quodlibet The Quodlibet (Latin for what pleases) is a musical form dating back to the 15th century where many disparate melodies are juxtaposed. Popular in the Renaissance, sacred and secular melodies were combined, often to comical effect due to the resultant incongruity of the words. The form was considered the ultimate test of a composer's mastery of counterpoint. The most famous Quodlibet is without doubt the final Variation of Bach's Goldberg Variations. As a form the Quodlibet is less common in more recent music, although examples can be found in the works of Kurt Weill and David Del Tredici.   My own Barcarolle/Quodlibet was inspired by the (perhaps apocryphal) story of the funeral where musicians were asked to play a Bach Choral, but due to miscommunication played instead the Bacarolle from The Tales of Hoffmann. Here, the Bach Choral Allen Menschen mussen sterben (All Men Must Die) is heard in the strings pizzicato, with a tempo indication In slow motion. The alto line of the Bach suggests a phrase from Beethoven's Ninth Symphony (Alle Menchen werden Bruder) heard in the muted trombone. Before long, the famous tune from Offenbach's opera is heard, followed by quotations from iconic Barcarolles by Chopin, Mendelssohn and Faure, as well as two Venetian popular songs and more Beethoven.   III. Barcarola/Ostinato/Carillon An ostinato is a repeated musical figure, and carillon is Italian for music box. This movement references the obsolete genre of salon pieces that imitated music boxes: such works by composers like Liadov and Gretchaninov used to be a mainstay of pianists' encore repertoire. This movement is however much darker in conception than those pleasant trifles. Utilizing the full battery of percussion, the carefully notated temporal slowing of the ostinato becomes overwhelmed by a poignant chorale melody before this box is snapped shut.   IV. Barcarolle Oubliee (Forgotten Barcarolle) Marked limpido (still) the final movement begins with the sound of rain produced by a percussion instrument called (appropriately) a rain stick. Halting phrases in the harp coalesce into the accompaniment for a plangent melody heard in the clarinet. The central Adagio of this movement leads to a shattering climax, before the opening phrases return and dissipate into nothingness.

SKU: CF.YPS208F

ISBN 9781491152966. UPC: 680160910465.

A stunning and heart-wrenching composition based on the Jewish folk son Shlof, Mayn Kind. You can hear the emotional content pour out of this piece written in memory of an outstanding orchestra director. The piece beginnings with original material to set the tone, followed by a clarinet solo on the song. It then develops through a variety of different harmonic presentation before building to a nice key change and climatic moment. The piece ends as it began, but with a more hopeful tone. An amazing piece.
Sleep, My Child was commissioned by the Madison Middle School Band and Orchestra in Tampa, Florida, and is dedicated to the memory of their Director of Orchestras Kevin Frye. Director of Bands Chris Shultz championed the commissioning of this piece to honor Kevin after he passed away in December 2016. Mr. Frye was a beloved member of the staff at Madison Middle as well as the music community of Tampa and the state of Florida. I was a personal friend of Kevin’s. We were in several musical groups together when we were young that were formative to both of our musical careers. I also guest conducted his Madison Middle School Orchestra several times over the past four years. His musicianship, teaching skills and love for his students were exemplary.When taking on the challenge of writing a piece to honor Kevin’s legacy, Mr. Shultz and I decided to try and include several important aspects of Kevin’s life into the piece. Kevin was proudly Jewish, a fantastic trumpet player and loved Jazz. With that in mind, and after a lot of research, a Jewish folk song Shlof, Mayn Kind was selected as the basis for the piece, not to be religious, but to honor his faith and heritage. Plus it is a beautiful song, and I felt the title reflected the sentiment I was looking to express, which is of someone taking rest after a long battle with illness. Thus, a lullaby seemed appropriate.I also wanted to incorporate Jazz into the piece, but in a concert setting, so you will hear as the piece develops, the harmonies of the folk song expand into ones found more commonly in Jazz compositions. Not in a far out way, but in a subtle way to again honor this part of his life. For example the climactic moment of the piece at the fermata in m. 57 is a Dbmaj9#11 chord. It appropriately give the piece the angst that I was looking for at this moment in the piece, while honoring the importance of Jazz in Kevin’s musical life.The piece was also conceived to include both the Madison band and orchestra in the performance at the premiere. I wanted the pieces to work separately by the band and separately by the orchestra, but I also wanted them to be able to play the piece together to honor Kevin.The piece begins with original material designed to set the mood of the piece with a tempo/style marking of pensive, but also as material that I used as connective musical tissue between statements of the folk song.  After this introduction, the folk song is presented by a solo violin (or clarinet) with orchestral accompaniment in a simple straight forward presentation of the song. This is followed by a woodwind section statement of the folk song accompanied by muted trumpets. During this presentation the harmony starts to expand with more color notes in the chords. The low brass are added half way through this statement to add depth and lushness.The introductory material returns, but with some angry hits in the lower voices. This leads to a full ensemble state of new material that is used to transition to the climax of the piece, and to build tension. After the build, the piece modulates to a shortened statement of the folk song with more advanced harmonies and an active counter line in the violas, horns, saxes and first clarinets to further build the tension.  This tension is released at the fermata in m. 57, as mentioned above. After a thoughtful pause, the piece concludes with a completion of the folk song again with a solo violin (or clarinet) followed by a return of the introductory material to tie the piece together. The piece ends hopeful, with a solo trumpet (Kevin’s instrument) that is dissonant at first, but then resolves as if to say - everything will be OK! It has been my distinct honor to have been asked to write this piece in Kevin’s memory! I hope that in some small way the piece helps to bring comfort to his family, students, colleagues and to all those that knew him!–Larry ClarkLakeland, FL  2017.