Even In The Odds

Seventeen popular songs easily arranged for the piano, with chord symbols and lyrics. Includes 'Annie's Song', 'As Time Goes By' and 'Sometimes When We Touch'. / Chant Et Piano

Par MC NEFF STEPHEN. My research for Banished began with a small group of students during a Trinity Laban co-lab period in 2013, though the idea goes back over 30 years when I first saw Steve Gooch’s Female Transport and stored the idea of adapting it as an opera until the right opportunity arose. I have been involved in opera for a long time and it has always been a frustration for me that while there is an abundance of female talent (particularly so in conservatories and colleges) there is a noticeable lack of challenging roles available for young women. The roles most often undertaken are maids or innocent girls, compliant wives or tomboys. Not that the problem is necessarily confined exclusively to young women, but where good roles exist, the women are all too often merely passive or victims. Things happen to them rather than them making things happen. They are unable to influence their circumstances and are usually resigned to their fate. Worse still, they are often judged in some way responsible for what happens to them, culpable even because of their looks, their way of life or a streak of independence. Just think about Mimi, Carmen and Violetta (to name only three on a long list). All these characters die, and their attempts at individuality contribute to their demise in some way that they have no control over. With some exceptions female characters in opera are too often sad, mad or bad. Redressing this balance and taking advantage of the richness in vocal talent is only one reason to write an opera reflecting the reality of a group of strong women who work things out for themselves. The transportation of people to Australia at the beginning of the nineteenth century is not a particularly well understood part of history beyond a sort of folk myth. What were the circumstances, who were the people and what happened to them? Opera does not exist to completely answer these questions, but it can focus on the women as individuals and help tell their story. (All the women named in the opera actually existed.) My approach has to been to put the women’s narrative centre stage and, in the confines of an oppressive, dangerous environment go with them on their journey as they survive or sink. The demands on the women are huge. At every turn they are oppressed by their jailers, the system that brought them here and their own low expectations. They have to work out ways to overcome these odds. We discover them through their music in solos and ensembles, sometimes reflective, at other times boasting about their lives a petty criminals and trying to establish status and pecking order. Alongside this I have used references to music of the time to create another reality built on larger ensembles and choruses. This is a sort of collective consciousness aware of loss, longing and context – even of a broad political dimension to the realities of Transportation. Despite the acute awareness of their circumstances in these ensembles, there is also a resilience and strength that transcends the individual stories. Stephen McNeff / Instrumental Music / Répertoire / Voix

And Novelty Instrumentals Of Rev. Gary Davis-Rev. Gary Davis is the real thing. The authentic blind-seer. He is a genius with a brightly burning spirit enormous musical intelligence technical brilliance an encyclopaedic memory driving passion deep faith araunchy and gracious sense of humour. A mystic. He is an icon of the style of Guitar he was born into known today as the Piedmont blues. Through players of the first half of the twentieth century like Alfred Shultz Mose Ranger Merle Travis and Chet Atkins this is the signature American fingerpicking style that would so deeply inform the country folk blues and even rock and roll of our day.Rev. Davis (1896-1972) was born black indeep poverty in South Carolina blind from an early age. He overcame these longest of odds to become world famous a giant of American music. He brought together black and white styles country gospel folk themes blues jazz ragtime minstrel songs dance tunes and popular song. He developed his own brilliant fingerpicking style that was deep economical and adaptable enough to easily cover all these genres. Supporting all his creativity was anunshakable faith that pulled him through the obscurity the bitter hard times and crushing poverty he would endure until the folk music awakening of the fifties and sixties caught up to him.In this book and accompanyingaudio Ernie Hawkins has transcribed 9 of Rev. Davis' best known rags minstrel shows tunes and novelty instrumentals. These are challenging and very rewarding to master. Included are: Buck Dance Devil's Dream Sally Where'd You Get Your Liquor From Fast Foxtrot St. Louis Tickle Darktown Strutter's Ball and his tour de forces Twelve Sticks and SoldiersMarch. The unique bottleneck/slide tune Whistlin' Blues is also presented played in an open D6 tuning.The playing of Rev. Davis has influenced generations of guitar players from Blind Boy Fuller to

The Full Score for Peter Maxwell Davies’ fourth in a series of ten string quartets commissioned by the Naxos Recording company first performed by the Maggini Quartet on 20th August 2004 at the Chapel of the Royal Palace Oslo Norway as part of the Olso Chamber Music Festival. Composer Note: The fourth Naxos quartet was written in January and February of 2004 with the intention of producing something lighter and much less fierce than itspredecessor an unpremeditated and spontaneous reaction to the illegal invasion of Iraq.I returned to the well-known Brueghel picture of children's games (1560 now in Vienna) which had been the inspiration for my sixthStrathclyde Concerto for flute and orchestra. These illustrations liberated my musical imagination but I feel it would limit the listener's perception to be too specific about which game relates to exactly which section of thework. Suffice it to say that there is vigorous play - leap-frog bind the devil with a cord truss wrestling - alongside quieter pastimes - masks guess whom I shall choose courting odds and evens. The single movementjuxtaposes these activities as abruptly and intimately as they occur in Brueghel. Rather as the eye is taken into different perspectives and proportions of scale within the picture taking liberties which would never be presentin for instance Brunelleschi architectural drawings so here with a constant sequence of transformation processes I have distorted the neat precise implications of modal progression expressed in the unison opening phrase(from F to B through A sharp/B flat) so that the ear is led en route into the sound equivalents of strange passageways and closed rooms: sicut exposition ludus. As work on the quartet progressed I became aware that Iwas reading into and behind the games adult motives and implications concerning aggression and war with their consequences. It was impossible to escape into innocent childhood fantasy. The nature of the F to B

Les chansons de l'album 'Who Else' en notation standard et tablature de guitare. / Guitare