SKU: KJ.WB334

UPC: 8402701478.

The Voice on the Mountain was written for Mike Veak, a band director who dedicated 30 years of his life to teaching instrumental music in Lincoln, Nebraska. Nolan Schmit begins the piece with a flute solo representing a solitary voice on a mountain. The voice begins to build in strength and intensity as it travels down the mountain, is heard by others and is communicated to distant lands. This is a musical metaphor for a teacher - a solitary voice - who impacts generations of students. This is really a tribute to all band directors. A dramatic setting with an explosive ending.

About Standard of Excellence in Concert

The Standard of Excellence In Concert series presents exceptional arrangements, transcriptions, and original concert and festival pieces for beginning and intermediate band. Each selection is correlated to a specific page in the Standard of Excellence Band Method, reinforcing and expanding skills and concepts introduced in the method up to that point. Exciting parts with extensive cross-cueing are presented for every player. Accessible ranges, appropriate rhythmic challenges, and creative percussion section writing enhance the pedagogical value of the series.

Sold individually, each In Concert selection includes a full Conductor Score and enough student parts for large symphonic bands. Each student part also includes correlated Warm-Up Studies. The Conductor Score comes complete with rehearsal suggestions, a composer biography, program notes, a rehearsal piano part, several ready-to-duplicate worksheets and a duplicable written quiz.

SKU: KJ.WB288F

A brilliant overture portraying our country's new found patriotic spirit since the infamous day of September 11, 2001. A great contest/festival choice!

About Standard of Excellence in Concert

The Standard of Excellence In Concert series presents exceptional arrangements, transcriptions, and original concert and festival pieces for beginning and intermediate band. Each selection is correlated to a specific page in the Standard of Excellence Band Method, reinforcing and expanding skills and concepts introduced in the method up to that point. Exciting parts with extensive cross-cueing are presented for every player. Accessible ranges, appropriate rhythmic challenges, and creative percussion section writing enhance the pedagogical value of the series.

Sold individually, each In Concert selection includes a full Conductor Score and enough student parts for large symphonic bands. Each student part also includes correlated Warm-Up Studies. The Conductor Score comes complete with rehearsal suggestions, a composer biography, program notes, a rehearsal piano part, several ready-to-duplicate worksheets and a duplicable written quiz.

SKU: CF.CPS252

ISBN 9781491159699. UPC: 680160918287.

America is intended for any intermediate to professional concert band looking to honor the United States of America and/or members of the Armed Forces. It is therefore ideal for performance on or around any patriotic holiday. It is not a typical setting of the tune, in that many liberties are taken to showcase each instrument of the ensemble, with the melodic focus constantly shifting. The conductor and performers should seek out these moments, and bring them to life whenever possible. The introduction, mm. 1-12, should be approached in the style of a fanfare, with an emphasis on syncopation and exaggerated nuance in regards to articulation style. Here, hidden beneath woodwind flourishes and triumphant bugle calls, the low voices play quotes of familiar American tunes such as The Star-Spangled Banner (m. 1, beat 3) and Simple Gifts (m. 3, beat 4). In mm. 15-22 the melody is carefully hidden among counter lines. This should be carefully balanced to highlight the melody, while still shaping the counter melodies appropriately. A brief return to the fanfare style occurs in mm. 33-35 before melding back into the chorale style. In regards to dynamics, performers should be reminded that within any single dynamic exists a range of expressive shades. No two notes should be played at the same volume, ensuring direction in even the simplest of phrases. Generally speaking, the fortissimo dynamic should be approached thoughtfully, with the bulk of the sound coming from the lowest voices, and the least from the highest voices.
America is intended for any intermediate to professional concert band looking to honor the United States of America and/or members of the Armed Forces. It is therefore ideal for performance on or around any patriotic holiday. It is not a typical setting of the tune, in that many liberties are taken to showcase each instrument of the ensemble, with the melodic focus constantly shifting. The conductor and performers should seek out these moments, and bring them to life whenever possible.The introduction, mm. 1–12, should be approached in the style of a fanfare, with an emphasis on syncopation and exaggerated nuance in regards to articulation style. Here, hidden beneath woodwind flourishes and triumphant bugle calls, the low voices play quotes of familiar American tunes such as The Star-Spangled Banner (m. 1, beat 3) and Simple Gifts (m. 3, beat 4). In mm. 15–22 the melody is carefully hidden among counter lines. This should be carefully balanced to highlight the melody, while still shaping the counter melodies appropriately.A brief return to the fanfare style occurs in mm. 33–35 before melding back into the chorale style.In regards to dynamics, performers should be reminded that within any single dynamic exists a range of expressive shades. No two notes should be played at the same volume, ensuring direction in even the simplest of phrases.Generally speaking, the fortissimo dynamic should be approached thoughtfully, with the bulk of the sound coming from the lowest voices, and the least from the highest voices.

SKU: HL.49018099

ISBN 9790001158428. UPC: 884088567347. 8.25x11.75x0.457 inches. Latin - German.

On letting go(Concerning the selection of the texts) In the selection of the texts, I have allowed myself to be motivated and inspired by the concept of 'letting go'. This appears to me to be one of the essential aspects of dying, but also of life itself. We humans cling far too strongly to successful achievements, whether they have to do with material or ideal values, or relationships of all kinds. We cannot and do not want to let go, almost as if our life depended on it. As we will have to practise the art of letting go at the latest during our hour of death, perhaps we could already make a start on this while we are still alive. Tagore describes this farewell with very simple but strikingly vivid imagery: 'I will return the key of my door'. I have set this text for tenor solo. Here I imagine, and have correspondingly noted in a certain passage of the score, that the protagonist finds himself as though 'in an ocean' of voices in which he is however not drowning, but immersing himself in complete relaxation. The phenomenon of letting go is described even more simply and tersely in Psalm 90, verse 12: 'So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom'. This cannot be expressed more plainly.I have begun the requiem with a solo boy's voice singing the beginning of this psalm on a single note, the note A. This in effect says it all. The work comes full circle at the culmination with a repeat of the psalm which subsequently leads into a resplendent 'lux aeterna'. The intermediate texts of the Requiem which highlight the phenomenon of letting go in the widest spectrum of colours originate on the one hand from the Latin liturgy of the Messa da Requiem (In Paradisum, Libera me, Requiem aeternam, Mors stupebit) and on the other hand from poems by Joseph von Eichendorff, Hermann Hesse, Rabindranath Tagore and Rainer Maria Rilke.All texts have a distinctive positive element in common and view death as being an organic process within the great system of the universe, for example when Hermann Hesse writes: 'Entreiss dich, Seele, nun der Zeit, entreiss dich deinen Sorgen und mache dich zum Flug bereit in den ersehnten Morgen' ['Tear yourself way , o soul, from time, tear yourself away from your sorrows and prepare yourself to fly away into the long-awaited morning'] and later: 'Und die Seele unbewacht will in freien Flugen schweben, um im Zauberkreis der Nacht tief und tausendfach zu leben' ['And the unfettered soul strives to soar in free flight to live in the magic sphere of the night, deep and thousandfold']. Or Joseph von Eichendorff whose text evokes a distant song in his lines: 'Und meine Seele spannte weit ihre Flugel aus. Flog durch die stillen Lande, als floge sie nach Haus' ['And my soul spread its wings wide. Flew through the still country as if homeward bound.']Here a strong romantically tinged occidental resonance can be detected which is however also accompanied by a universal spirit going far beyond all cultures and religions. In the beginning was the sound Long before any sort of word or meaningful phrase was uttered by vocal chords, sounds, vibrations and tones already existed. This brings us back to the music. Both during my years of study and at subsequent periods, I had been an active participant in the world of contemporary music, both as percussionist and also as conductor and composer. My early scores had a somewhat adventurous appearance, filled with an abundance of small black dots: no rhythm could be too complicated, no register too extreme and no harmony too dissonant. I devoted myself intensely to the handling of different parameters which in serial music coexist in total equality: I also studied aleatory principles and so-called minimal music.I subsequently emigrated and took up residence in Spain from where I embarked on numerous travels over the years to India, Africa and South America. I spent repeated periods during this time as a resident in non-European countries. This meant that the currents of contemporary music swept past me vaguely and at a great distance. What I instead absorbed during this period were other completely new cultures in which I attempted to immerse myself as intensively as possible.I learned foreign languages and came into contact with musicians of all classes and styles who had a different cultural heritage than my own: I was intoxicated with the diversity of artistic potential.Nevertheless, the further I distanced myself from my own Western musical heritage, the more this returned insistently in my consciousness.The scene can be imagined of sitting somewhere in the middle of the Brazilian jungle surrounded by the wailing of Indians and out of the blue being provided with the opportunity to hear Beethoven's late string quartets: this can be a heart-wrenching experience, akin to an identity crisis. This type of experience can also be described as cathartic. Whatever the circumstances, my 'renewed' occupation with the 'old' country would not permit me to return to the point at which I as an audacious young student had maltreated the musical parameters of so-called contemporary music. A completely different approach would be necessary: an extremely careful approach, inching my way gradually back into the Western world: an approach which would welcome tradition back into the fold, attempt to unfurl the petals and gently infuse this tradition with a breath of contemporary life.Although I am aware that I will not unleash a revolution or scandal with this approach, I am nevertheless confident as, with the musical vocabulary of this Requiem, I am travelling in an orbit in which no ballast or complex structures will be transported or intimated: on the contrary, I have attempted to form the message of the texts in music with the naivety of a 'homecomer'. Harald WeissColonia de San PedroMarch 2009.

SKU: MN.56-0108

UPC: 688670221255. English, Latin. Psalms 142; Jeremiah 3:48, 52, 56.

Invictus: A Passion addresses one of the world’s most powerful stories through the lens of the modern world. The texts, written or inspired by women, describe not only human suffering and persecution but also the human capacity for love and humility in the face of tyranny. Composer Howard Goodall is uniquely suited to bring these texts to life with music of emotional clarity and sweeping force. This excerpt is scored for soprano solo, SATB choir and piano. This fourth movement of the larger work is inspired by the extraordinary story of Irena Sendler née Krzyżanowska, a Polish nurse and head of Żegota, the Polish Council to Aid Jews in the Second World War, whose personal interventions saved the lives of approximately 2,500 Jewish children in the Warsaw Ghetto, smuggling them to safety, acts of humanitarian bravery that eventually caused her arrest and torture by the Gestapo. She is honoured as Righteous Amongst the Nations at Yad Vashem, Jerusalem. The Latin texts of this movement are taken from the Book of Lamentations (“My eye hath run down with streams of water, for the destruction of the daughter of my people. My enemies have chased me and caught me like a bird, without cause…”) and from Psalm 142, the Old Testament being the meeting-point of Sendler’s Catholicism and the Jewish tradition of those whose lives she saved. Duration 6:19.

SKU: MN.56-0109

UPC: 688670221262. English, Latin. John 20:1.

Invictus: A Passion addresses one of the world’s most powerful stories through the lens of the modern world. The texts, written or inspired by women, describe not only human suffering and persecution but also the human capacity for love and humility in the face of tyranny. Composer Howard Goodall is uniquely suited to bring these texts to life with music of emotional clarity and sweeping force. This excerpt is scored for soprano solo, tenor solo, SATB choir and piano. The text is by Christina Georgina Rossetti, Isaac Watts (“When I survey the wondrous cross,”) and drawn from John 20:1 (this text in Latin). The music is serene, acknowledging the grief of those who are left to mourn. Duration 6:57.

SKU: MN.56-0055

UPC: 688670220586. English.

Arranged for SATB choir, two keyboards, strings, and optional harp, with soprano, tenor (optional) and baritone soloists, this fresh and unorthodox interpretation reflects on the words of the Latin Mass by juxtaposing them with poems in English. For soprano solo and SATB choir, this movement begins with the choir on the English text by Phineas Fletcher (1633). A 32-measure soprano solo follows, which covers the majority of the English text. The soloist then begins the “Recordare,” a calm, descending melodic line with the choir singing the opening “Drop, drop” motif as accompaniment. The choir then concludes with the slow, descending lines “Jesu pie, Jesu pie.” Duration 4:04.

SKU: RU.30041FS

9 x 12 inches.

The RBC Mariachi Series is a storied catalog full of wonderful melodies and timeless tunes by legendary musicians and arrangers Juan Ortiz and Jamie Martin Vela. The Mariachi catalog is a wonderful resource for any level of Mariachi Ensemble, with charts that span easy to advanced difficulty levels. Complete sets come with vocal sheet music as well as lyric sheets for ease of performance and rehearsal, while others come with alternate parts in Trumpet and Violin to make each piece more accessible.