PARTITIONS GRATUITES : PIANO ET VOIX
- Escape From Darkness

By Erik Morales. Concert Band/Wind Ensemble. FJH Concert Band. This musical work illustrates the harrowing experience of our hero, Ichabod Crane, as he tries to escape the fate that was cast upon him on that dark and scary night. The introduction also illustrates the unsettling feeling Crane has as he departs into the darkness. Once convinced he is being pursued, he darts forth suddenly on his horse, Gunpowder, and the chase begins. The very last measures of the piece illustrate the moment of impact. The story also suggests that Brom Bones, a character who competed with Crane for the affections of a local maiden, may have been the perpetrator of the horrible prank. But Irving ingeniously hints at this supposition and leaves the reader to ponder the mystery of the legend. Score for this title: B1299S. Extra part for this title: B1299P. Concert Band. Level: Grade 3. Score and Set of Parts. Published by The FJH Music Company Inc.

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.

Comp leted 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.

(The best in contemporary jazz from Europe). By Various. Edited by Chuck Sher. For C instruments. This edition: spiral-bound. Fake book. 423 pages. Published by Sher Music Company

(The best in contemporary jazz from Europe). Composed by Various. Edited by Chuck Sher. For Bb instruments. This edition: spiral-bound. Fake book. 423 pages. Published by Sher Music Company

Chamber Music Piano

SKU: PR.110418380

Composed by Carlos Gardels. Full score. 12 pages. Duration 8 minutes, 40 seconds. Theodore Presser Company #110-41838. Published by Theodore Presser Company (PR.110418380).

ISBN 9781491135334. UPC: 680160687497.

THREE FANTASIES is a fantastical escape from reality. The first fantasy (“Prelude”) features a luscious and expressive melody accompanied by dark, romantic harmonies. The following fantasy (“Cosmic Lullaby”) begins and ends in a serene and introspective manner, with a tumultuous and harmonically rich middle section. To end the set, “Intermezzo” provides reflection and a lively resolution. Gardels’ profound lyricism and masterful piano writing make this set enjoyable for any pianist to perform at home or in the concert hall.
The three fantasies here were written during the height of the 2020-21 Coronavirus lockdowns – a time everyone will forever recall as a period of the world standing still and experiencing new degrees of isolation, inactivity, and apprehension.A fantasy is a genre to which a composer can turn as a respite from the constraints of form, tradition, and expectation. What the genre may lack in structure and design it makes up for with spontaneity, capriciousness, and improvisatory musical gesture.I hope performers feel free to take a similarly “fantastical” approach to the interpretation of these works, seeing the score and notation as a point of departure rather than arrival, and proceed with unabashed freedom of spirit in their playing.

(The best in contemporary jazz from Europe). Composed by Various. Edited by Chuck Sher. For Eb instruments. This edition: spiral-bound. Fake book. 423 pages. Published by Sher Music Company

10 Bewitching Piano Solos for Recitals. Composed by Various. Willis. Recital, Solos. Softcover. 32 pages. Duration 240 seconds. Published by Willis Music

Piano and orchestra

SKU: FG.55011-372-5

Composed by Matthew Whittall. Study score. Fennica Gehrman #55011-372-5. Published by Fennica Gehrman (FG.55011-372-5).

ISBN 9790550113725.

Imag es of the sea figure prominently throughout my life and memories: from holidays on the Atlantic coast during my Canadian childhood to my current Baltic home, and the imagined, only later experienced Mediterranean of my ancestral heritage. As an immigrant (son of an immigrant) bound to two northern countries, the sea is emblematic of my twin homelands, from the expanses of water surrounding them to those separating them. A Mari usque ad Mare. The sea is also an enduring image of the unknown, of expanses unexplored, of the raw power of nature and, for too many currently, of terror holding a hope of refuge - or the pain of loss.
Such disparate ideas were captured for me in the seascapes of the New York painter MaryBeth Thielhelm, whom I met in 2008 during a residency on the Gulf of Mexico. Her vast, abstract, nearly monochromatic depictions of imaginary seas in wildly varying moods were the catalyst for a concerto where the piano is frequently far from a hero battling a collective, but rather acts as a channel for elemental forces surging up from the orchestra, floating - sometimes barely so - on its constantly shifting surface. There are few themes to speak of, beyond a handful of iconic ideas that periodically cycle upward. Rather, the piano's material is largely an ornamentation of the more primal rhythmic and harmonic impulses from the orchestra below - a poetic interpretation, if you will, of the more immediate experience of facing the vastness of some unknown body of water.
The title Nameless Seas is borrowed from one of Thielhelm's exhibitions, as are those of the four movements, which are bridged together into two halves of roughly equal weight - one rhapsodic and free, the other more single-minded and direct, separated only by a short breath. The opening movement, Nocturne, is predominantly calm, if brooding, darkness and light alternating throughout. Lyrical arabesques sparkle over gently lapping cross-currents in the strings and mirrored timpani, the piano's full power only rarely deployed. The waves gradually build, drawing in the full orchestra for a meeting of forces in Land and Sea, a brighter, more warmly lyrical scene that unfolds in series of dreamlike, sometimes even nostalgic visions, which for me carry strong memories of sitting on rocks above surging Atlantic waves. The third movement, Wake, is a fast, perpetual-motion texture of glinting, darting rhythms and sudden shafts of light, with a prominent part for the steel drums, limning the piano's quicksilver figurations. An ecstatic climax crashes into a solo cadenza that grows progressively calmer and more introspective rather than virtuosic. Much of the tension finally releases into Unclaimed Waters, a drifting, meditative seascape in which the piano is progressively engulfed by a series of ever-taller waves, ultimately dissolving into a tolling, rippling continuum of sound.
It has been a great privilege to realize such a long-held dream as this piece, and to write it for not one, but two great pianists. Risto-Matti Marin and Angela Hewitt, both of whose friendship and support have been unfailing and humbling, share the dedication. Nameless Seas was commissioned by the PianoEspoo festival and Canada's National Arts Centre, with the premieres in Ottawa and Helsinki led by Hannu Lintu and Olari Elts. Thanks are due also to the Jenny and Antti Wihuri fund, whose generous grant provided me with much-needed time, and Escape to Create in Seaside, Florida, the source to which I returned to do a large part of the work.