Hello fellow guitarists, For those of you who weren't able to attend last
Sunday's guitar orchestra rehearsal here's a short update.
Leslie was away visiting her mum in Brisbane so she asked me if I could
organize the rehearsal.
I felt that the Floriade performance had come off very well and basically
the orchestra has those 6 pieces pretty much nailed down. (There was a
little problem with the tempo change in the Courants, in hindsight we
probably should have had Leslie out front conducting that one.) So I thought
it might be fun to try something new.
So I found some pieces for Sunday that we all would be able to sightread
easily and perhaps find a gem that we may be able to add to the repertoire

   1. La Cumparsita by Rodriguez/arr Richard Charlton from "The Latin
   Quarter" (a very well known Argentinian Tango)
   2. 4 Christmas Carols -Leslie arranged these a while go.
   3. Margarideta (Catalan Folk Song) arr Eythor Thorlaksson. This from:
   http://www.eythorsson.com/en/Quartets.aspx

Well I think La Cumparsita went down a treat! Possibly one of the most well
known Tango tunes and a great little arrangement by Richard Charlton. After
a little bit of separate part work the orchestra just about had it up to
speed so with a little more work on dynamics and articulation (to make it a
little more of a tango) this style of piece could easily slot into our
existing repertoire. There seemed to be smiles all round.

"What's with the Christmas Carols!??" In Cooma we seemed to be asked to play
for all sorts of situations (nursing homes, etc) coming up to Christmas so I
thought the orchestra may be getting similar invitations in Canberra.

Margarideta also went well. It's a very pretty Catalan folk tune and I found
this on:http://www.eythorsson.com/en<http://www.eythorsson.com/en/Quartets.aspx>
.
Wow! What a great site. Just heaps of guitar solos (including studies and
methods by Sor, Cardassi, Carulli etc), duets. trios and quartets. All open
source and free. I went back to this site to find more ensemble pieces. Boy,
he's got some great stuff on there. Say if you click on "4008 El Gato Montes
by Manuel Penella" (In the Quartet Section) you not only get a free pdf file
of the music (full score and parts) but you get all these YouTube
performances of this arrangement by all these different guitar orchestras
from all over the world. It's so cool! I haven't had time to explore the
whole site yet, but what a great resource not just for the orchestra but for
anyone who would like to form maybe smaller groups. There's a large range
from easy to hard...so something for everyone.
Cheers
Allan

--
Allan Spencer
Cooma School of Music
Shop 2 Parkview Arcade, 123 Sharp Street
Cooma NSW 2630
www.coomamusic.com.au
Ph: (02) 6452 6067