Three Duets Concertants op. 20

SKU: P2.PZA90187

Concert Duets is a collection of 14 arrangements of works by prominent 18th-century composers, mostly taken from Trio Sonatas. Duet 11 is a Jim Self original work in the Rococo style; and Duets 12, 13 and 14 are arrangements of the three-movements of the Bach Concerto for Two Violins. Included with this edition are play-along recorded tracks by tubist Zach Collins, who also served as editor of the current edition.

I created these duets as Christmas gifts for my tuba playing friends, with the first duet being arranged in 1976. All 14 of the duets are challenging and fun to play and are especially effective as concert pieces.

As a young musician I had the privilege of playing duets with many of the world’s finest tubists including Harvey Phillips, John Fletcher, Bob Pallansch, Chester, Schmitz, Dan Perantoni, Toby Hanks, Ron Bishop, Winston Morris and Tommy Johnson. I learned more about playing music in these duo sessions than from any other musical activity I have ever experienced. Duets are powerful teaching tools for learning and mastering rhythm, phrasing and intonation and for developing overall musicianship.

Jim Self:

Self (b. 1943) is a Los Angeles free-lance musician, a veteran of thousands of Hollywood motion pictures, television shows and records, and tuba soloist on many prominent movies. His tuba was the “Voice of the Mothership” in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. He is Principal Tuba/Cimbasso with the Pacific and Pasadena Symphonies and the Los Angeles Opera and Hollywood Bowl Orchestras. Formerly he was in The U.S. Army Band and tuba / euphonium professor at the University of Tennessee. He holds a DMA from the USC Thornton School of Music where he is Adjunct Professor of Tuba and Chamber Music. His compositions and arrangements include works for solo tuba, brass quintet, other brass, string and woodwind chamber music, wind band and orchestra. Jim has produced many solo jazz and classical recordings. His music and recordings are available from Potenza Music and www.jimself.com. Jim Self is a Yamaha Performing Artist.

Zach Collins, editor:

Zach Collins is professor of Tuba and Euphonium at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. In 2019, he released his first solo album, Chronicle. It was recognized with the 2021 ITEA Roger Bobo Award for Excellence in Recording for the best Solo Tuba Album.

His interpretation of William Kraft’s Encounters II for Solo Tuba was released on Cambria Master Recordings. Zach performs with Eastern Standard, a horn, tuba, piano trio he formed with Heidi Lucas and Jacob Ertl. The ensemble has released two commercial albums, Eastern Standard and Wanderlust.

Zach regularly performs with the Keystone Chamber Winds, Altoona Symphony Orchestra, and West Virginia Symphony Orchestras. His compositions and arrangements for brass and for tuba and euphonium can be purchased from Cimarron Music and Eighth Note Publications. Zach earned degrees from Texas Christian University and the University of Southern California. His primary teachers have been Richard Murrow, Jim Self, Tommy Johnson, and Norm Pearson. Zach Collins is a Miraphone artist.

SKU: BT.DV-21663

English.

SKU: P2.60002

This composition grew out of a musical concert in Chicago sometime in 1981. The concert was an outgrowth of public opinion about the superiority of various ensembles in three of the top five US Symphony Orchestras of that period. The Philadelphia Orchestra under Eugene Ormandy had the reputation of having the most luxurious string section of any orchestra in the world. Ormandy was a superior violinist himself, and worked his strings into providing a similar luxurious string sound of which he himself was master. It was agreed that the Boston Symphony had the top woodwind choir, and the Chicago Symphony the best brass choir. An outgrowth of these widely held opinions occurred in Chicago in 1981 when the Chicago Symphony Brass section announced a performance in Symphony Hall. The event attracted a sell out crowd and standing room overflow. Public interest was keen and intense. The detail of the concert included brass solos, duets and trios of a wide variety and concluded with a large brass choir work by a local composer, which had been commissioned to premiere in this concert. The musical evening was marvelous, a brilliant triumph for superlative brass players of world-class quality. Afterwards the players remained on the stage and were beset by hundreds of congratulating fans. The principal horn, Dale Clevenger, was a friend of mine who was present at the International Horn Conference in 1974, when Barry Tuckwell of the London Symphony premiered my Sonata for Horn and Piano. I congratulated Dale on the brass wonders that we had all just witnessed, and commented that the final brass work was somewhat disappointing. Dale said that he and the other players felt the same. At that point, Dale said Why don't you write a work for the Chicago Brass for our next offering? How could I not be complimented by such an invitation? I immediately started to write Stonehenge, having just visited Stonehenge in Britain a month or two earlier. But the Chicago Brass did not have a follow up to their first presentation, so there was no opportunity for my new work to be performed by them. Later there was a premiere in Madison, Wisconsin, by three professional brass quintets who were together hosted by the School of Music of the University of Wisconsin. They were joined by four superb percussionists from the Madison Symphony. Stonehenge received a wonderful ovation from an enthusiastic full house audience, and that led to wide use in the Midwest by other brass groups, including a professional brass choir in Minnesota, which recorded the work superbly, and two different tours of the work by a brass choir from the Indiana University School of Music. The wonderful response to this work's recording and its many performances have been a delight to the composer.

SKU: HL.50510290

ISBN 9790080141724. UPC: 073999922905. Bach (23 x 30,2 cm) inches. Hungarian, English, German.

We recommend this volume to those who would like to play the melodic instruments (tubular bells, marimba, vibraphone, xylophone) that are gaining an increasingly important role in the rapidly developing teaching of percussion instruments. Starting from the first steps, familiarization with the notes, it provides varied, colourful musical material sufficient for several years, including not only folk melodies of different nations but also works by many important composers (Beethoven, J.C.F. Fischer, Handel, Kodaly, Lully, Leopold and Wolfgang Mozart, Praetorius, Purcell and Schubert). Together with duets and pieces with piano accompaniment, which are particularly suitable for concert performance, exercises to develop skill in score reading are included in the teaching material, in the compilation of which the author drew on several decades of teaching experience. The textual instructions are provided in three languages: German, English and Hungarian.