Results
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£104.99A Fanfare of Bells - Hermann Pallhuber
A Fanfare of Bells is festival music composed for a particular occasion: in 2012 the young 3BA Brass Band from Germany took part in the champion section of the Flemish Open Brass Band Championship in Mechelen, Belgium, for the first time: a festival of premieres. A Fanfare of Bells, accordingly, is music that creates festival atmosphere. Big melodies designed to touch the heart are cut through with brilliant fanfares. The piece contains lyrical and melodic passages that bring the skills and general musicianship of the 3BA Brass Band to the fore, along with various technical passages that spotlight the excellence of the individual musicians. Peels of bells at thestart and end of the work ring in a new atmosphere for brass band music in Germany and Austria. A Fanfare of Bells is, however, also a tribute to the wonderful sound of brass instruments, that blend together to create the most subtle sonorities: bells as a symbol of the beauty of the instruments--both sonically and visually: let the bells ring...
Estimated dispatch 5-14 working days
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£74.99
Durkle Bandrydge Suite - Bruce Fraser
Durkle Bandrydge is the name of the composers imaginary world, but it could very well be anyones invisible dream world with a different name. In this very versatile suite by Bruce Fraser, 8 characters are featured, each with its ownpeculiarities, making Durkle Bandrydge such a colourful place. Do these characters differ that much from us? That is for you to find out! In the last part, all characters come together in a special way.Durkle Bandrydge exists at the end ofyour street. It is invisible to humans, but Durkle Bandrygators can watch us with great interest. The music will introduce you to some of the characters who live in this unusual place. The parts: Somnanbulyss, who is a giant trollguarding the entrance to Durkle Bandryde. At least, he is supposed to, but he tends to sleep most of the time. His music is therefore very slow moving and sleepy. Long Gwysteen is a tall, mysterious, and somehow sophisticated character,who walls around with a shell on his back. His music glides along rather gracefully. Squelfitch is a rather unpleasant and smelly character who lives in a bog, which is why his music sounds rather slimy and a bit like trying to walkthrough quicksand. Perfydlia is a meddling old woman, who gossips about everybody and squeals with sudden delight at the small exciting bits of tittletattle about others in the village. In the music you can hear her sudden little squealsof delight. Maryann Lovely is a beautiful young lady, graceful, gorgeous, absolutely devine, and her music is obviously just the same. Thistledoo Nicely is a lively character who spends and spends and spends with her credit card,buying the latest fashion and never worries about having to pay the bills. Her music reflects her excitement when shopping and het 'happy go lucky' approach to life. Marsyn Edginton is the Lord of the manor, the richest man in town, the'big cheese', the man with all the power and, of course, the biggest house. He is very grand and his music like he could be a king. Jimmy McScotsmyn is a red haired scotsman wearing tartan cap. He misses his home country terribly and eatslots of shortbread, oatcakes, scotch eggs, porridge and drinks an enormous amount of Scotch Wisky, which helps him to have fond memories of the kind of music he would like to dance to when he was a younger man. His favourite dance is a Jig andthis is the music he remembers. Grand March of the Durkle Bandrydgators. We hope that you have enjoyed meeting these characters from Drukle Bandrydge and would invite you to listen to all the villagers now march along in a grand parade -it is a pity that you can not see them, what is a wonderful sight. If you listen carefully, you will hear the melodies which belong to the characters as they march past. Oh what a grand spectacle!
Estimated dispatch 5-14 working days
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£54.99They are Coming - John Emerson Blackstone
There are people who are capable of planning well. They live their lives in a well-structured manner and know exactly what they have to do. On the other hand, there are also people who are the exact opposite: they want to do too many things at once and are often somewhat absent-minded, which occasionally results in frantic situations. The outcome of one such situation is 'They are coming'. John Emerson Blackstone had been working on a new composition for some time when he received a telephone call from his editor, who told him that the deadline was approaching rapidly, even worse, that it would expire at the end of that same day and that he would drop by in person to fetch thecomposition! Blackstone set to work in a frenzy and completed the last details. When his editor arrived, the piece was finished ..... and got its definitive title: 'They are coming'.
Estimated dispatch 5-14 working days
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£124.95Hyperlink - Peter Graham
Hyperlink was commissioned by the National Youth Brass Band of Great Britain (funded by Arts Council England and the Department for Education) for its 70th Anniversary Year. Since the anniversary coincided with other significant celebrations in 2022 (including the Royal Albert Hall/Ralph Vaughan Williams 150th and the Platinum Jubilee of Elizabeth II) it was requested that these also be recognised in some way.
Where better to begin this challenging brief but with a computer search for the NYBBGB founder Dr Denis Wright (coincidently born in Kensington, home of the RAH). The subsequent rabbit warren of hyperlinks led me to structure the work through a series of "associations":
Movement I - The Voice of Jupiter.
Alongside the discovery that Denis Wright had been a church organist was the realisation that while the RAH has hosted thousands of musical events the fabric of the building actually incorporates a musical instrument, the famous Henry Wills organ (aka The Voice of Jupiter).Organ and J S Bach are synonymous (e.g. Toccata in D min) and so both become fundamental to the content of the movement. An opening 7 note quote from the Toccata leads to a mammoth sound cluster, as if every note on the huge RAH organ is sustained. The material which follows is based upon the notes BACH (in German notation). The notes are manipulated in various ways in a 12 tone matrix; reversed, inverted and so on. Other techniques employed in the movement are ones of which Bach was master, including ground bass and fugue.
Movement II - Remember Me.
The lives of Salvationist composer Ray Steadman-Allen (born 1922) and Ralph Vaughan Williams are remembered here, with "RSA" in musical notation and fragments of RVWs famous Tuba Concerto providing the source material.While writing the movement my father passed away and to close his funeral service the family chose the uplifting Robert Lowry hymn They'll sing a welcome home. It seemed fitting to conclude the movement with a reflective setting of the chorus, the repeated phrase "Welcome, welcome home" eventually disappearing into the ether.
Movement III - Vivat.
The finale takes the form of a short fantasy upon Hubert Parry's marvellous coronation anthem I Was Glad, truly a celebratory note with which to conclude.The first performance of Hyperlink was given by the NYBBGB conducted by Martyn Brabbins at the Royal College of Music, London on August 6th 2022.
Estimated dispatch 3-5 working days
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£35.00
Epitaph (for Hillsborough) - Peter Meechan
Epitaph (for Hillsborough) was written on the 20th anniversary of the Hillsborough stadium disaster, April 15 1989, in memory of the 96 victims. All of the victims were fans of Liverpool Football Club, the club I have supported since I was a young child.The disaster unfolded in front of the BBC television cameras, and due to the importance of the match (FA Cup semi final), millions, including myself, witnessed it first hand, leaving a lasting impression in the public psyche.Several features of the piece were determined by the tragedy. The length of the piece, 6 and a half minutes, represents the minutes of the game that were played that day (The match was abandoned after 6 minutes), and the final thirty seconds of the work, where the band gently applaud, is a reference to the first match played after the tragedy, a European Cup semi final between AC Milan and Real Madrid.After 6 minutes, the referee blew his whistle and all the players stood still where they were, both sets of fans applauded in memory of the perished, and the fans of AC Milan began singing Youall Never Walk Alone, the anthem of Liverpool Football Club.The work also features 96 strikes of the tubular bells, in memory of each person who lost their life.Epitaph is dedicated to the 96 people who died that day, and to their families whose fight for justice is an inspiration to all.
Estimated dispatch 12-14 working days
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£70.00
Origins - Peter Meechan
Origins is in three movements, with each movement having a different subject matter, all linked by the idea of origins: the first movement refers to musical origins; the second to the origins of life; and the final movement to the space exploration - the research of all origins. The first movement is based on a short motif, heard in the first three notes the soloist plays. These three notes cover the interval of a minor third (an interval that often plays a crucial role in my music) on which the whole concerto is built. The soloist and accompaniment interplay freely throughout the opening section, before an ostinato accompaniment appears - over which the soloist sounds a long legato melody. A short cadenza follows and a return to the opening material leads the movement to an end. The second movement, titled Harryas Song, is - as tradition dictates - a slow movement. Happy and reflective in nature, the main melody was written on the evening that my closest friend, Mark Bousie (a fine euphoniumist himself), and his wife Jayne, had their first child - Harry Bousie. It seemed only fitting that this song should be written for Harry in celebration. The final movement brings me back to a lifelong fascination with space, and in this particular movement, the Space Shuttle Discovery. Having completed 39 missions (including flying the Hubble telescope in to orbit), and spent a total of 365 days in space, SS Discovery made its final voyage in 2011 and was taken to the Smithsonian in Washington D.C. in April 2012. This final movement, titled Discovery, pays tribute to the great shuttle whose missions inspired millions across the generations. Origins was commissioned by Marco Schneider, Adrian Schneider and the Dunshan Symphonic Wind Orchestra, Beijing, China.
Estimated dispatch 12-14 working days
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£35.00
Sentinel - Peter Meechan
Sentinel was written in the summer of 2010 and follows on from another work by the composer, The Karman Line - a piece which describes the point where the earthas atmosphere ends and Outer Space begins.Sentinel goes further into space and takes the idea that the stars are somehow guardians of the sky that we can see, and Space further beyond.The opening section, which prominently features metallic percussion and broad melodies, portrays the grand open space that the stars inhabit. The middle, slower, section is more reflective depicting the isolation of Space, before we hear a reprise of the first section as the finale.Sentinel was written for the 2011 National Youth Brass Band Championships of Great Britain.
Estimated dispatch 12-14 working days
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£30.00strange geometry
Descriptionstrange geometrywas commissioned by Morgan Griffiths and the Hammonds Saltaire Band for their performance at the Brass in Concert Championships of 2015.As a bit of a space/sci-fi geek, as well as a musician, two events during the summer of 2015 had a particular effect on me. The first was the tragic early death in a plane crash of the famous film composer James Horner. Horner's music, particularly in films like 'Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan', 'Avatar', 'Apollo 13' and even his debut in Roger Corman's 1980 budget film 'Battle Beyond the Stars', defined for a generation the sound of sci-fi at the cinema. Along with John Williams he created the vocabulary for those who wish to express other-worldly wonder in music and his inventive talent will be much missed in an industry where originality has become something of a dirty word in recent years.The second event was the epic flyby of Pluto by the NASA New Horizons spacecraft. There are many reasons to find this mission inspiring - for example, the scientists and engineers behind it created a craft that has travelled at 37,000 mph for nine years and three billion miles to arrive within seventy-two seconds of the predicted time for the flyby. That they achieved this with such accuracy is an outstanding tribute to humanity's ingenuity and insatiable curiosity. However, the most exciting aspect of the mission was the clear, high resolution pictures of this unthinkably remote and inhospitable world beamed back to mission control. The best previous image of Pluto was an indistinct fuzzy blob - suddenly we could see mountains made of ice, glaciers of methane and carbon monoxide and nitrogen fog - features previously unimagined on a world thought to be a slightly dull ball of cold rock. The BBC's venerable astronomy programme 'The Sky at Night' waxed lyrical about these newly discovered features, referring to "the surprising discoveries of mountains and strange geometry on the surface of this cold distant world".I like to think that Horner would have been as inspired as I have been by this real-life science story, and this piece uses some of the vocabulary of the sci-fi movie soundtrack in a tribute to the memory of a great musician and to the inspirational geeks at NASA who have boldly taken us where no-one has gone before.Note: This work comes with a B4 portrait score. Listen to a preview and follow the music below!
Estimated dispatch 7-14 working days
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£20.00Scarborough Fair
DescriptionScarborough Fair is a traditional English ballad about the Yorkshire town of Scarborough. The song relates the tale of a young man who instructs the listener to tell his former love to perform for him a series of impossible tasks, such as making him a shirt without a seam and then washing it in a dry well, adding that if she completes these tasks he will take her back. Often the song is sung as a duet, with the woman then giving her lover a series of equally impossible tasks, promising to give him his seamless shirt once he has finished.As the versions of the ballad known under the title Scarborough Fair are usually limited to the exchange of these impossible tasks, many suggestions concerning the plot have been proposed, including the theory that it is about the Great Plague of the late Middle Ages. The lyrics of "Scarborough Fair" appear to have something in common with an obscure Scottish ballad, The Elfin Knight which has been traced at least as far back as 1670 and may well be earlier. In this ballad, an elf threatens to abduct a young woman to be his lover unless she can perform an impossible task.As the song spread, it was adapted, modified, and rewritten to the point that dozens of versions existed by the end of the 18th century, although only a few are typically sung nowadays. The references to the traditional English fair, "Scarborough Fair" and the refrain "parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme" date to 19th century versions. A number of older versions refer to locations other than Scarborough Fair, including Wittingham Fair, Cape Ann, "twixt Berwik and Lyne", etc.The earliest notable recording of it was by Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger, a version which heavily influenced Simon and Garfunkel's later more famous version. Amongst many other recordings, the tune was used by the Stone Roses as the basis of their song "Elizabeth my Dear".
Estimated dispatch 7-14 working days
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£12.00LeFay's Mirage
DescriptionThe "mirage" of the title refers to an optical effect called a fata morgana, often seen in a narrow band right above the horizon. It is an Italian term named after the Arthurian sorceress Morgan le Fay, from a belief that these mirages were fairy castles in the air or false land created by her witchcraft to lure sailors to their deaths.Fata Morgana mirages significantly distort the object or objects on which they are based, often such that the object is completely unrecognizable. A Fata Morgana may be seen on land or at sea, in polar regions, or in deserts. It may involve almost any kind of distant object, including boats, islands, and the coastline.Music often performs the same tricks - the original material is inverted, reflected and changed until it becomes something almost entirely new. This work is in two main sections, slow and fast, separated by a virtuoso cadenza with the material in the second part being a distorted reflection of that in the first. As befits a work commissioned to show off a soloist's range and ability, the work is highly challenging technically and covers the full range of the tenor horn.Where the sustain pedal is required by the music, this is indicated in the piano part; pedalling elsewhere is at the player's discretion.
Estimated dispatch 7-14 working days
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