Format : Vocal Score
SKU: BT.MUSAM1011637
ISBN 9781785582585. English.
This Easy songbook edition of the bestselling Uken Play Ukulele series will get beginners of any age strumming easy chords and playing popular songs in no time. Written by professional player and educator Mike Jackson, the book features his instantplay method together with downloadable play-along audio. The book begins with how to tune up, before detailing Jacksons innovative instant play method that helps you easily remember where to put your fingers for different chords. Once youvemastered this, Uken Play Easy Ukulele teaches you the 6 chords you will need to play all the 25 songs included in this book. The songs get progressively more challenging and each feature chord diagrams, lyrics and chord symbols, helping you tolearn to play the Ukulele by practising strumming the chords while also playing 25 famous tunes. Songs include I Walk The Line, Banks Of The Ohio, Achy Breaky Heart, and many more. The accompanying audio downloads will let you tune up, hear thesongs how they should sound, then let you play along with a full backing band. Some songs feature Mikes handy hints so learning the Uke goes as smoothly as possible. If youve struggled to learn to play the Ukulele because you cant remember thechords, or you want to learn some great songs with a minimum of chords, such as Goodnight Irene and Streets Of Laredo, Uken Play Easy Ukulele is a beginners instant play method that truly does work. Mike Jackson is a professional Ukulele playerand multi-instrumentalist who has sold over 250,000 albums and performed extensively across Australia and the rest of the world.
SKU: FP.FBS03
ISBN 9790570500192.
Sarah Baker is Vocal Composer in Residence at Education Music Services, an ABRSM examiner and a well known composer of songs and musicals for primary schools and massed-choral events.All this experience has come together in the creation of this album of piano pieces, inspired by growing up in the Chiltern Hills. Suitable for players of around grade 4-5 standard, her evocative sound pieces describe a crash-landing hot air balloon, garden invading cows and a even a snake in a pond!Air Balloon!: One vivid memory I have as a child is of the day that a hot air balloon passed over our house and made an emergency landing on the road in front! The sound of the gas being blown into the balloon to try to keep it high enough to pass the house sounded so loud and intimidating, and then there was the bustle of the neighbours as we all went out into the street to watch. It was both terrifying and exhilarating to watch the balloon float past and then land so near by.Buzzards Circling: There is something so calming and restful about watching birds of prey circling in the thermal currents of a summer sky. Growing up in the Chilterns gave me plenty of opportunity to watch buzzards and red kites. This piano solo captures the beauty of their flight as they glide so effortlessly through the air.There’s A Cow In The Garden Eating The Flowers: Inspired by the memory of seeing an unexpected cow in the garden! This surreal image is captured in a quirky waltz, as I portray both the absurdity of the moment and the sense of wonder I felt as a child, looking out of the window and seeing the cow walking round and eating the flowers. The final phrase articulates my longing: ‘I wish it would come again’.Watching The World Go By: A short, reflective piece, remembering what it was like to have time to just sit and watch the world go by from my bedroom window.Autumn Skies: A miniature about the beauty of Autumn skies and the poignant sense of loss for a summer gone. Friends I was fortunate to have several children of my own age living close by. We seemed to be forever making dens, playing out in the street and generally enjoying each other’s company. This piece reflects that sense of well-being.Snake In The Pond: One hot summer I was astonished and scared to see a grass snake cooling off in our garden pond! I watched, both horrified and fascinated, as it rose up from the depths and then disappeared again. Here I portray the sense of the hazy summer afternoon as I peacefully watched the tiny movements of fish in the pond, contrasted with the fear and excitement of seeing the snake appear.Morning Commute: I recollect many mornings stuck in traffic as my Dad took me to school on his way to work. There is one main road out of the village where I grew up, and that got more and more congested the closer we got to the town. We may not have chatted a lot, but it was always good to be together with my Dad, lost in our own thoughts.The Witch’s Cottage: My siblings and I had a fascination with a small cottage nearby. It was set back from the road in a dark part of the woods and we called it 'the witch's cottage’. Every time we passed, I imagined I heard the distant cackle of the witch and wished I could catch a glimpse of her.These pieces are written to complement my other collection, Night Time Impressions, which also draw on childhood recollections, particularly of the woods behind the house where I grew up. - Sarah Baker 2023.
SKU: PR.111402890
ISBN 9781491134672. UPC: 680160685264.
What??s in a name? While the title is French for ??Eight Flower Songs,? the texts are all in English. The poems?? flowers metaphorically evoke fragrance, love and loss, life and death, rebirth and regrowth. Perhaps the texture and beauty of Gordon??s music are themselves French. The 20-minute song cycle draws on poems from Wordsworth to Dorothy Parker, as well as from contemporary poets including the composer himself.When So-Chung Shinn came to me with the idea of commissioning a song cycle with her spectacular husband Tony Lee, she had in mind something having to do with flowers. Tony had asked her what she wanted for her birthday, and she said she wanted to be behind the creating of a new work. Lucky me, I was the recipient of the commission. So-Chung sent me a little description of all the flowers she loves, but I had to take the idea and create a narrative in my head.It is always a matter of pleasing the commissioner, yet coming up with something you can get behind and hear music for as well. I already knew I wanted to use my ??Tulips? poem which is really about the arc of a relationship as represented through the life span of the Tulips, and, in many ways, disappointment; and Dorothy Parker??s ??One Perfect Rose,? which is wry, bitter, cynical, and funny, in a way only Dorothy Parker can so pithily express.I thought of Jane Kenyon??s exquisite ??Peonies at Dusk,? because knowing she died so young (46) of leukemia, the poem has such a particular resonance, almost humanizing the Peonies, casting the moon as a sentient being, illustrating so beautifully how connected everything is, alive here, and revolving around these exquisite blossoms. Then, I remembered her husband Donald Hall??s poem ??Her Garden,? which he wrote after Jane died, his grief intermingled with his inability to care for what she had created, to keep alive what so represented her aliveness, broken as he was, and I felt I already had a story.I found the Wordsworth, because it felt like pure joy to me, but also, if each of the songs has a color in my head, ??The Daffodils? is pure yellow and a good place to start. My partner Kevin and I live on a lake, and every year, the first Daffodils, the shock of yellows, the oranges, the blinding whites, after the long snowy winters, sing of the newness that is about to enfold us in its green miraculousness.At first, the cycle ended with the Langston Hughes poem ??Cycle,? or ??New Flowers,? because it was lovely, and about rebirth, which is obviously optimistic, and apt, but then, my friend Telmo Dos Santos, a wonderful Canadian poet whom I met at Banff, sent me his poem ??Afterlife With Lilacs,? having no idea what I was working on. I felt I had to add it because it is so dazzling, and it immediately felt like the missing link. Finally, there were unfortunately rights issues, namely, we could not, no how, get in touch with the Langston Hughes Estate, after so many happy collaborations.After almost a year??s frustration, I wrote my own text, ??Play, Orpheus,? which ended up being fortuitous, because the first time I met So-Chung, she entered the room and the most exquisite scent of Lillies of the Valley, Muguet de Bois, filled the room. I went right over to her and rudely put my nose to her neck, for the intoxication of the scent. So ??Play, Orpheus? is for So-Chung, to remind us of the precious treasures of this world flowers remind us of. Everything and everyone lives and dies, lives and dies. Death and resurrection.And of course, this is music, this is song, so the inclusion of the God of music, Orpheus, seems apt. Huit Chansons de Fleurs is really about what flowers represent, their radiance, their flickering impermanence, the way they are used to celebrate, as well as to mourn...... and of course, their fragrance. Their fragrance.Ricky Ian GordonJuly 28, 2021.
