Peter Maxwell Davies' 1994 work for unaccompanied SATB choir using text from George Mackay Brown's 1971 poem A Hoy Calendar.A girdle round the year in five minutes. In twelve clear simple images George Mackay Brown'spoem turns through the months of Orkney life and as it turns so the modal music for a modestly able school or amateur choir moves it on its way with images of matching lucidity.Vocal score with piano accompaniment forrehearsal purposes.

A Choral Suite for Two Part (Soprano and Alto) Children's Chorus setting the text of George Mackay Brown. This enchanting 12-minute cycle is typical of the subtle and delicate way Maxwell-Davies approaches writing forchildren: straightforward tender affectionate yet with just a hint of the complexity found in challenging 'adult' works like the cycle Westerlings. George Mackay Brown's poetry with its haiku-like short stanzas and pointillisteallusive imagery leaves you constantly intrigued : who is the boy 'lost on the hill till sundown' and why is time 'a bird with white wings?' Is this perhaps the poet himself playing a bit of holiday truant?

Sea Runes is scored for unaccompanied choir AATBBB or SATBBB set to text by George Mackay Brown. It is a haunting and evocative setting of a group of six poems by the Orkney poet George Mackay Brown and was written as acompanion piece to The House of Winter. It was commissioned by the King's Singer's and was first performed by them on 16th November 1986 at the Alice Tully Hall New York

Composer's Notes:Dove Star-Folded was written at Christmas 2000 in memory of the recently deceased Sir Steven Runciman who had been a friend for more than thirty years. It was he who owned the small automaticorgan which had belonged to King George III with which the King in his madness had tried to teach caged finches to sing: this was central to the inspiration and conception of my Eight Songs for a Mad King in 1969.Thenew string trio is as far from the frenzied world of that composition as it is possible to travel - it is a contemplative work based on a Greek Byzantine hymn in recognition of Sir Steven's researches into Byzantine history. Itis a short series of transformations of the opening phrase with a tangential flow of thought which I would like to think catches the essence of Steven's luminous thought processes and conversation. The end is calm and wrapt reflecting the title's inwardness; I borrowed this title from the Orcadian poet George Mackay Brown. Peter Maxwell Davies

New Orleans Funk. Funk is a very rhythmic music style that finds its origin in the 1960s. The American artist James Brown and the New Orleans-based group The Meters are considered the founders of this genre. Funk is characterized by an independent bass line that emphasizes each first beat of the bar (the one), as well as by a rhythmic combination of syncopated melodies and accompaniments with lots of harmonic additions. This style-conscious composition by Peter Kleine Schaars contains a healthy blend of the harmonic ingredients as well as the rhythmic challenges of funk music. On the one hand, New Orleans Funk is an educational exercise with the rhythmic cells 9,10, 14, 15 and 16: on the other hand, it is a funky highlight of your rehearsal or concert!

A haunting setting of four elegies from the writing of George Mackay Brown composed by Peter Maxwell Davies. Completed in 1998 this powerful and unsettling work is based upon four short verses that explore the more sinister tragic and even supernatural qualities of the oceans and tides. Composed for soloists mixed chorus and Orchestra the work was commissioned by the Scottish Chamber Orchestra to celebrate its 25th anniversary. The work wasfirst performed in December 1998 at Queen's Hall Edinburgh conducted by the composer. The vocal score is available using product code CH61504.

Par OKPEBHOLO SHAWN E.. Shawn Okpebholo?s Heritage, in the Edition Peters Concert Band Series, evokes moods, events and sounds (including West African drumming and indigenous melodies) from an ethnomusicological research visit the composer undertook to Nigeria. One of the primary musical themes of the work is an adaptation of a song that comes from the Esan people, a small ethnic group in the southern part of Nigeria and the tribe to which the composer has deep historical and family ties. The Esan language is poetic in nature and, at various moments in the work, the musicians chant the text from an Esan song: Ekine leleyea do obhimen la doeki nalo (My investment in you is paid off. Because of your hard work, your future is bright). Heritage is a revised version of a work previously entitled This is Africa, which was commissioned by Professor Marcellus Brown and the Boise State University Symphonic Winds for the 2011 National CBDNA Convention and is dedicated to the memory of Dr Harry Begian. / Date parution : 2022-05-31/ Répertoire / Concert Band

A work for solo violin and orchestra commissioned by Donald McDonald for the 21st birthday of the Scottish Chamber Orchestra and the 60th birthday of the composer. It was first performed in November 1993 in Glasgow by JamesClark and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra conducted by Maxwell Davies.The spell is one quoted by George Mackay Brown in his book An Orkney Tapestry: 'Let not plough be put to acre except a fiddle cross first the furrow.'Davies's dancing concerto imagines the fiddler following a route from field to field from dance to dance accompanied by a bunch of companions in the form of an orchestra. As the music goes on so it gets brighter and livelier moving from the dark colouring of clarinets bassoons and strings to full ensemble with prominent brass and (solo) tuned percussion as if the dancers as much as the fields were beginning to glow with new life.Score(miniature). Duration c. 20mins.

A continuous setting of six poems from George Mackay Brown's Fishermen with Plough which concern the traditional ways of life and death in Radwick the village on hoy Orkney where the composer lived for 28 years. The choir issupported throughout the piece by pointing entries and doubling the choral lines within the piano part. The piano part is not just an accompaniment it has it's own discourse and is correspondingly challenging. For SATB Choirwith Piano accompaniment.

This work was commissioned by the Scottish Chamber Orchestra to celebrate its 25th anniversary. The first performance was given on 3rd December 1998 at Queen's Hall Edinburgh by Lisa Tyrrell (Soprano) Margaret McDonald (Mezzo) Neil Mackie (Tenor) and David Wilson-Johnson (Baritone) the Scottish Chamber Orchestra Chorus and Orchestra. Text: George Mackay Brown.

Study score of The Three Kings A Christmas Cantata for SATB soli chorus and orchestra. Texts by George Mackay Brown and mediaeval anonymous. This work was commissioned by the London Symphony Chorus to commemorate its30th anniversary. First performed on 15th October 1995 at the Barbican Hall London. Duration 50 minutes. Vocal Score also available for sale. Conductor's score and orchestral parts are available for hire.

House Of Winter is a setting of four Christmas poems by George Mackay Brown for AATBBB or SATBBB a cappella choir. The music is continuous and though scored for unaccompanied voices it becomes almost orchestra in itsevocation of the calm frozen stillness of an Orkney winter on the one hand and the wildness of a December storm on the other.The setting is largely homphonic in Davies’s 'adult' modal style and with a characteristicinventiveness of vocal scoring as in the storm sequence with its whistling upper voices and eruptive bass line.The first performance took place during the tenth St. Magnus Festival as part of a concert given by The King'sSingers in Kirkwall in June 1986.Vocal score with piano accompaniment for rehearsal purposes.

Anakreontika (Performing Score)-A Mediterranean erotic postlude to a time when Davies had been much occupied with setting the Orkney poetry of George Mackay Brown. The voice though is the same. The mezzo part is wide-ranging and melismatic and the ensembleplays music that is at once luminous and questioning memorialized and urgently communicative. Five short songs are woven together with instrumental commentaries into a single movement.