Spring Suite, May 2019 (finally arriving in October)

Spring Suite, May 2019 (stream and/or download for free at Bandcamp)

(Octave mandolin version pdf) (Mandocello version pdf)

1. Vernal Signs (mp3)
2. New Growth (mp3)
3. The Little Flowers (mp3)
4. The Cultivator (mp3)
5. Full Bloom (mp3)

Back in February I presented my Winter Suite, February 2019, a suite of tunes aimed at players of the mandocello and the octave mandolin. Today I am finally presenting the suite that I (mostly) composed in May as a follow-up. The delay was partly because Summer arrived and I was really busy and partly because I knew I wasn't quite satisfied with the original versions.

I revisited the pieces a couple of times during the summer and changed a few notes but I still didn't feel like the suite was ready to record. Finally, a couple of weeks ago, I took another look and decided I should just rewrite the first section altogether. I did that and the whole suite seemed better balanced somehow.

So here's the Spring Suite, May 2019 (finished in September) for mandocello or octave mandolin. As with the previous suite I have placed the complete composition as an "album" at Bandcamp in case you want to stream and/or download the music (free of charge) without having to click on each section. You can, however, go ahead and just click on each section of the suite here in its mp3 form.

I'm looking forward to seeing a roomful of mandocellists next week at the annual convention of the Classical Mandolin Society of America. On Thursday morning Jim Imhoff will present The Solo Mandocello, vol. 2 and I will join August Watters (author of the excellent Exploring Classical Mandolin from Berklee Press) to talk about some of our recent work. This will be a lot of fun.

Speaking of recent work, I was honored last week when Mel Bay published two new books with my name on the cover; Telemann for Two Mandolins and A Baroque Sampler for Octave Mandolin. Both are now available as print volumes and ebooks. Two books in the same week is highly unlikely to ever happen again for me and I really enjoyed hearing from many friends offering their congratulations.

In addition to the new Mel Bay books I am also finishing up a new tunebook to go with my Mandolin Tunes 2 recording from last fall. I will have some of these with me next week on my vendor table at the CMSA meeting in Bloomington-Normal, IL.

Lest you imagine (I don't often get to use "lest" in a sentence) that I'm only working on books I am happy to say that I have played numerous gigs in the last few weeks, including four wedding dances over the course of 8 days. On Sunday afternoon I get to play some tunes with Pat O'Loughlin at the annual Polish Apple Day in Winona, MN. Who could ask for more?

I hope you enjoy the Spring Suite.