I am pleased to announce that people interested in some new pieces for piano may try some of mine. I have placed a set I'm calling Three Little Pieces at the link below. I'd be happy to hear that some pianists out there are trying them out. I've enjoyed writing them.

The first in the series is called The End is the Beginning. The title refers to the formal aspect of the piece. It's quite short, fun to play if you like open chords, and a little plaintive, but not without some prettiness.

The second piece is a Two-Part Invention which I've subtitled Three Part Inversion—a reference to the manipulations I performed to get three iterations of a theme. It requires some interesting pedaling, offering a chance to practice that skill.

The third piece is called Triptych—It has three panels, if you will, and uses the entire range of the piano with lots of crossing over. I was thinking a lot about compatible and incompatible bi-tonality when I composed it. So, as with many of my pieces, it contains a lot of minor nines. All the same, it is tuneful.

When I perform these, I plan to play the first piece twice, once at the beginning and once at the end.

I hope you enjoy them.

Recordings and Sheet Music for Three Little Pieces

Concert and Viola Sonata Premier Sunday, Nov. 10th

Join us on Sunday for a concert in a beautiful village. 

Mountain Top Music teachers Chris Nourse, violin and viola, and Ellen Schwindt, piano, perform Sonatas by Mozart, Cage, Finzi and Schwindt at the Tamworth Congregational Church on Sunday, November 10^th, 2013 at 4:00 PM. The program ranges over four centuries. The oldest piece on the program is a violin sonata (K. 454) by Mozart. It is an unusual sonata, full of operatic moments and mischievous themes. Two pieces on the program come from the first and second halves of the 20^th century. Gerald Finzi wrote five bagatelles--trifles--in England in the first half of the 20^th century. These pieces are romantic rambles through a lush harmonic landscape. This is perfect music to play in the bucolic landscape of Tamworth village, bounded by pastures and forests on every side. John Cage, working later in the century and in the cacophony of New York City, could still imagine complete peace—as is made obvious by his melodies for violin and piano. Cage uses a very simple palette of sounds to create spare and beautiful dances using delicate percussion from the piano and an ethereal grace from the violin. The last piece on the program is a premiere of a work Schwindt has been writing for the past year. Showing influences by composers like Gerald Finzi and Bohuslav Martinu, the sonata for viola and piano is neo-romantic in style and incorporates changing meters, and rich harmonies.  

Lately, I've been busy practicing for an upcoming concert called     Tangos and Trios

I'm excited about it because it's where I'll get to play my recent trio for flute, saxophone, and piano for the benefit of the community music school that is so close to my heart--Mountain Top Music Center. I get to work with two of my favorite colleagues--Mike Sakash and Julia Hendrickson. We have been having so much fun rehearsing together.

The program has two trios on it--my trio and one for the same instrumentation (there aren't so many of those works in existence) by Russell Peterson. His trio is quite jazzy, but still in the classical genre. It is a trance-inducing affair in some regards and has made us really work to get a good ensemble sound.

We've also put some fun pieces for duos. (Here's a math question for you: how many different combinations of one or two can you get from just three players). It seems like we're trying to answer that question with our  program.

In addition to the two trios, we've included these pieces:

Aria for Saxophone and Piano by Jacques Ibert
Morceau de Concourse for Flute and Piano by Gabriel Faure
Tango for solo piano by Bohuslav Martinu
La Perra Marysol by John Carbon
The Beginning is the End for piano solo by Ellen Schwindt
Contemplating Dawn in Winter for piano, saxophone, and flute by Ellen Schwindt

 The concert is a benefit for Mountain Top Music Center and it is to take place on Sunday, February 17th at 4:00 PM. Admission is $35 and reservations can be made by calling 603-447-4737.

Publishing a Trio for Alto Saxophone, Flute, and Piano

      Today, I finished the last editorial touches on a trio for Alto Saxophone, flute, and piano. I was excited to package it up, along with some recordings my friends Mike Sakash and Julia Hendrickson and John Cotter helped with. I'll be mailing it to Cincinnati tomorrow to be part of the National contest for "Distinguished Composer of the Year,"  a program of the Music Teachers' National Association. I am also posting it here, in case there are other trios like ours out there who want to play it.
      Now some of you may ask whether I have copy-righted the music. Well, I do have my name clearly emblazoned on the scores. But I do want to share the experience of my music. That is I want people to hear it. To be living music, it needs players and an audience.
      So if you would like to play this music, please do. All I ask is that you credit me with its composition in your performance and let me know if you plan to perform it. I'd like to know that my music is being played and (I hope) enjoyed in different places. Beyond those two things, I'd like you to you think a bit about how it might be possible to compensate me. I have considered putting a donate button on this site, but I haven't done that yet, nor am I convinced it's the right thing to do. I compose because I must. I earn my living as a music teacher (which occupation I dearly love). But more economic freedom would certainly buy me more time for composing. So if you like the music, think about this issue a bit and let me know what you think. What would be a convenient way for you to express your valuation of it? What would be fair? What would help more art flourish in the world?

     Please follow this link to the folder with the sheet music in it

   Files for Trio for Alto Saxophone, Flute, and Piano

This posting is for my orchestra friends. You can now download audio files for the piece "Vignettes From the Life of John Brown" that you are helping me premiere on October 28th. There are two types of files: midi and .wav. Both types play the tunes. The midi files do not use correct instruments. The .wav files are more accurate (but still a bit computery). The midi files are much smaller than the .wav files, so pick whichever makes sense on your machine.

Let me know if this process works for you!

Here's the link the the folder where the files are.
Click here for audio files of Vignettes from the Life of John Brown

Happy practicing.

A New Trio for Flute Saxophone and Piano

       Thanks to the generosity of New Hampshire's chapter of Music Teacher's National Association, a piece of mine will be premiered on Saturday, October 6^th at 3:30 PM at Keene State College. I was selected as the commisioned composer of the year by NHMTA. I've written a trio for flute, saxophone and piano. Mike Sakash and Julia Hendrickson will be performing with me. We hope to record the piece and perform it in the Conway area sometime in the next year, so if you can't make it to Keene, you still may have a chance to hear it performed.

      The piece is largely tonal, but it employs some stealthy elements of bitonality. The result is much more consonant than Kodaly's duo for violin and viola, but much more spicy than Robert Schumann's chamber works (to whom the piece owes a lot of inspiration.). Germaine Tailleferre and Bohuslav Martinu, two composer's whose work I've studied over the last couple of years, also influenced this work.

There are four movements, a romantic adagio, a jolly romp through the statements and developments of three themes, a fugue based on computational trees, and a motile allegro with a lyrical melody. I think the work is quite listenable despite my indulgence of academic compositional techniques.  

Syzygy--The Fourth Dimension

     Along with my regular Syzygy partners Mary Edes and Dana Cunningham, I have lately been contemplating time. Our next show, scheduled for the auspicious date of Wednesday, December 21, at 7:00 PM at Salyards Center for the Arts on Main Street in Conway Village to reflect on the nature of time. We regulars will be joined by Jed Wilson, cast as the immortal man.

     What is time, anyway? How does it impinge on us? How does it order our lives? Why does our experience of it vary? How do we find it? How do we lose it? How do we save it? These questions and more inchoate ones have inspired vignettes, musical selections, and poems. It's about time. Admission is $10 at the door or $5 for students.

     The Syzygy performance series takes its name from a term denoting the alignment of three or more celestial bodies in a straight line. Used in the fields of astrology, philosophy, psychology, mathematics, biology, and even poetry, syzygy denotes the coming together of disparate parts—however briefly—to form some new thing. The shows seek to use art to create a new and meaningful (if not entirely serious) experience. For more information about this show or about the series, ask Ellen at ellen.m.schwindt@gmail.com.