Online Concert Winter 2014

A quick announcement first: I'll be giving a presentation at the Indiana Music Educators Association conference in Ft. Wayne on January 16th, 2015. I'm going to lead an open rehearsal of three of my pieces - Avatar, Winstride and Gauntlet. Bring your scores to follow along, think of questions to ask me afterwards and listen to me show a talented group of young musicians how I like to hear my music performed!


On with the main event: Halloween concerts are done and it's Holiday concert time here in the States - and that means a bunch of new concert videos have popped up on YouTube. Let's have a look at a few of the really good ones:

Up first is the Vivace Advanced Orchestra killing it with Pioneer Sky at the Central Indiana All-Region middle School Orchestra Festival. They perform some nice dynamics and give the piece the right energy - bristling accents in the ostinatos, soulful legato in the lyrical parts. Nice job!

Next, the Mansfield Youth Strings of Mansfield, Ohio open their concert with North Pole Workshop, complete with percussion parts!  Fantastic tempo, nice precise playing and good style. I hope this one catches on. Great job, MYS!

Up next, Angie Cimbalo leads the Region 24 Sinfonia Orchestra at the Middle School Texas Music Educators Association All-Region Concert with a furious performance of Dragonfly. This is a piece that requires intense focus and these young musicians are right up to the task all the way through the end, never letting up. An arranger did a really great job with the harp parts as well - writing for harp is one of my favorite things to do but I seldom do it because so few school orchestras have harp players. But it really works well in this setting and it makes me wish I'd written that part myself. It's a fantastic performance.

Finally, the Olentangy Orange Middle School 7th Grade Orchestra performs Gauntlet. It's a good performance made all the more special by some awesome rock star stage lighting. Excellent tempo, nice expression, and they stick the landing beautifully. Nicely done!

Sales Statement 2012

Every year, the good people at Alfred Publishing send me a report showing how many of each of my pieces have been sold in the past 12 months. It's always exciting to get that kind of quantifiable feedback. When I first started getting them, they were much simpler, but since the advent of digital printing and different combinations of scores and parts became available for sale, the sales reports have become a lot more complicated. So, filtering through the many lines of data, here are my top-selling sets of scores and parts within the U.S. for 2012:

1. Maharaja
2. North Pole Workshop
3. Avatar
4. Gauntlet
5. Agincourt

I submitted Maharaja with little hope of it ever getting published and was shocked that it was accepted. I just thought it was too odd or too technically demanding to be taken seriously. A year later, looking around YouTube, I was shocked to discover that it's popular. And now I'm shocked to learn exactly how popular - nearly twice the sales of my next-best-selling piece! New pieces for tend to make a big splash in their first year, but Maharaja goes beyond expectations.

Gauntlet always makes the top 5 list and I'm excited to see that it remains popular. North Pole Workshop was also a new piece this year and it's great to see that it did so well.  Avatar was the top-seller for the past two years and I credited that to people mistaking it for the theme to James Cameron's movie, but it still has a strong showing, so I think it's safe to start attributing success on its own terms. Agincourt is one of my personal favorites, so I'm thrilled that it remains popular. Gargoyles usually makes the top five list but this year it was edged out by just one sale. Another newer piece, Shadows of Venice, would have taken the #7 spot.

Looking at the data for foreign sales of scores and parts is a different story:

1. Maharaja & Shadows of Venice (tie)
3. Agincourt & Sneaking Suspicion (tie)
5. Mambo Incognito & Star of Valor (tie)

There's a different system for music education abroad, which often doesn't involve classroom music ensembles, so foreign sales are far lower than in the U.S. But still, this year's numbers show an increased interest in some of the newer selections. If I was shocked to see that Maharaja is popular among American orchestras, I'm floored to learn that it's popular in other parts of the world. Major-key novelty pieces tend to dominate this list, but it's wonderful to see music like Agincourt and Shadows of Venice catching on.

Here's one more list - domestic sales of scores:

1. Gauntlet
2. Gargoyles
3. Avatar
4. Agincourt
5. Las Mariposas Exoticas

This list is important because orchestras need to buy extra scores to give the judges when they go to state Solo & Ensemble contests and high sales mean a piece is popular at contests. It takes several years for a piece to build enough credibility to be included on contest lists, so big sellers here are usually older pieces, but it's good to see Agincourt surging ahead.

There are a lot more ways to break down the data - digital scores and parts, print licensing, MP3 downloads – but that's enough for now. If you bought one of my pieces in 2012 (in any format) I want to thank you for a great year!

Gargoyles Tutorial Videos

Another great teacher has posted tutorial videos on You Tube!  She goes by the name QuietMusic, and I'm not sure where she's from, but please to enjoy and play along with her videos for Gargoyles:

Violin I

Violin II

Viola

'Cello

Bass

Nice job!  These are great - thank you for posting them, anonymous teacher! I hope your administrators, students, and their parents appreciate your dedication.

You can find more tutorial videos for North Pole Workshop and Lemon Twist here.

 

North Pole Workshop Tutorials

Dr. Patrick Murphy, orchestra director at Tecumseh Junior High and Jefferson High School in Laffayette, Indiana has set up a wonderful YouTube channel for his students and, having stumbled across it recently, I feel compelled to share.  In his videos, Dr. Murphy demonstrates and guides students through the music part by part, so they can practice along with him at home. It's a brilliant use of the technology and I'm honored that he took time to make videos for my own North Pole Workshop.

First Violin

Second Violin

Viola

'Cello

Bass

Way to go, Doc!  I really hope that your students, their parents, and the school administration appreciate all the hard work and creativity that went into this project!

North Pole Workshop

My third piece officially has a title!  After submitting it as "Workshop Song," my editor suggested I change it to be more overtly Christmas-related.  I suggested "North Pole Workshop" and they're going with it.  So there it is - next year you can look for these three new pieces:

Maharaja
Shadows of Venice
North Pole Workshop

Also, they liked my suggestion of including alternate parts for "Shadows of Venice."  The set will include Violin III parts (doubling the Viola part) and Cello II parts (doubling the Bass). The reason we're doing that is that each part includes at least one solo, so if an orchestra has no basses or weak violas, they can still perform the piece.