Old American Songs - First Set

SKU: HL.282479

ISBN 9781540034366. UPC: 888680789237. 9.0x12.0x1.01 inches.

Starting with the songs released just after Woodstock all the way through the disco era, this collection features almost 100 songs from the 1970s arranged for easy piano with lyrics: ABC • American Pie • Bridge over Troubled Water • (They Long to Be) Close to You • Dancing Queen • Free Bird • Goodbye Yellow Brick Road • How Deep Is Your Love • I Shot the Sheriff • I Will Survive • Imagine • Killing Me Softly with His Song • Layla • Lean on Me • Maybe I'm Amazed • Piano Man • Reeling in the Years • Smoke on the Water • Stairway to Heaven • Stayin' Alive • Sweet Home Alabama • Time in a Bottle • Walk This Way • We Will Rock You • Y.M.C.A. • and more.

SKU: GI.G-9966

ISBN 9781622773992.

What better way to discover the world than to sing songs that have captivated the imaginations of children across the continents. In this amazing collection of songs children love to sing, Karen Howard truly opens the door to encountering songs from diverse cultures and experiences, on themes from family, animals, flowers, food, and more. The repertoire in First Steps in Global Music is particularly accessible for teachers and children wishing to discover these great songs. Organized by geographical region, Howard provides the context and guidance—including references to recordings—for these songs to come alive. She further organizes the songs based on First Steps activity categories: Fragment Singing, Simple Songs, Movement for Form and Expression, Movement with the Beat, and Songtales. Take a look, have a listen, and see what captures your attention—and what might capture the imaginations of the children in your life! Featuring music from: Africa (Ghana, Kenya, Tanzania, Ethiopia, Zimbabwe) Oceania (Tahiti, Australia, New Zealand) Asia (China, Japan, Pakistan, Indonesia) Middle East (Israel and Lebanon) North America (Quebec, Guatemala, Mexico, Jamaica, Puerto Rico, Cuba, Haiti)  South America (Brazil, Peru, Chile)  Europe (Lithuania, Bulgaria, Poland, Republic of Georgia) For more information and resources about global music, visit giamusic.com/firststepsglobal. Special message: Since the summer of 2019, it has come to the attention of GIA editors that some of the American folk songs in the First Steps in Music series and other publications have racist histories. GIA is committed to providing resources that uphold the highest possible values for children and for our classrooms. We are excited about the efforts of the Feierabend Association for Music Education’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee to develop standards through which repertoire should be evaluated. We intend to revise our publications based on those standards at the earliest possible opportunity. Learn more at giamusic.com/dei.

SKU: PR.466000470

UPC: 680160099405. 11 x 17 inches.

This is the second incarnation of a work I first composed in 1994 for symphonic wind ensemble. The earlier version was intended to be the summation of three-part suite, each part being named for a different national park in the Western United States. This orchestral version, commissioned in 1999 by the Utah Symphony and dedicated to the memory of Aaron Copland, is more than a re-scoring of the earlier piece; it is a re-thinking of all its elements. Zion is a place with unrivaled natural grandeur, being a sort of huge box canyon in which the traveler is constantly overwhelmed by towering rock walls on every side of him -- but it is also a place with a human history, having been inhabited by several tribes of native Americans before the arrival of the Mormon settlers in the mid-19th century. By the time the Mormons reached Utah, they had been driven all the way from New York State through Ohio and, with tragic losses, through Missouri. They saw Utah in general as a place nobody wanted, but they were nonetheless determined to keep it to themselves. Although Zion Canyon was never a Mormon Stronghold, the people who reached it and claimed it (and gave it its present name) had been through extreme trials. It is the religious fervor of these persecuted people that I was able to draw upon in creating Zion as a piece of music. There are two quoted hymns in the work: Zion's Walls (which Aaron Copland adapted to his own purposes in both his Old American Songs and the opera The Tender Land) and Zion's Security, which I found in the same volume in which Copland found Zion's Walls -- that inexhaustible storehouse of 19th-century hymnody called The Sacred Harp. My work opens with a three-verse setting of Zion's Security, a stern tune in F-sharp minor which is full of resolve. (The words of this hymn are resolute and strong, rallying the faithful to be firm, and describing the city of our God they hope to establish). This melody alternates with a fanfare tune, whose origins will be revealed in later music, until the second half of the piece begins: a driving rhythmic ostinato based on a 3/4-4/4 alternating meter scheme. This pauses at its height to restate Zion's Security one more time, in a rather obscure setting surrounded by freely shifting patterns in the flutes, clarinets, and percussion -- until the sun warms the ground sufficiently for the second hymn to appear. Zion's Walls is set in 7/8, unlike Copland's 9/8-6/8 meters (the original is quite strange, and doesn't really fit any constant meter), and is introduced by a warm horn solo. The two hymns vie for attention from here to the end of the piece, with the glowingly optimistic Zion's Walls finally achieving prominence. The work ends with a sense of triumph.