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SKU: A0.983172
Composed by Craig Wadley. 21st Century,Contemporary,Contest,Festival,Halloween. Individual part. 18 pages. Wadley Publications #4638491. Published by Wadley Publications (A0.983172).Nevermore for Unaccompanied Saxophone by Craig Wadley.
As this is an unaccompanied piece, ANY saxophone is acceptable. While most soloists will undoubtedly opt to use alto or soprano, the composer welcomes renditions of this piece on any of the larger saxes as well.
This piece was inspired by Nevermore: An Evening With Edgar Allen Poe, a single act play featuring Jeffrey Combs. My good friend, Dr. Brent Bristow of Arkansas State University, Beebe, convinced me to go see the play when it was presented there in March of 2018. That performance by the legendary Mr. Combs inspired this piece.
Why unaccompanied saxophone? Brent Bristow and I have been close friends since high school, and since he is the one who convinced me to see this show, and given that he plays classical saxophone (yes, that IS a thing!), I figured saxophone would kill two birds with one reed… or something like that.
The show itself is a one-man performance, so that’s why this piece is unaccompanied. I toyed with the notion of including some text from the show. Eventually, I decided to go with The Raven, which is featured prominently in Combs’ monologue. But I didn’t want to RELY on The Raven, so I wrote the piece in such a way that it can be performed with OR without the narrator.
I took a bit of inspiration from Bach’s cello music and brought in some more modern elements such as shifting meters and limited use of slap-tongue and multiphonics to keep things interesting. No altissimo is used.
This work would make for excellent solo repertoire at the collegiate level, while still being potentially accessible to advanced high school players. If the narrator is used, this work would also be great as part of a Halloween/horror variety show!
You may note that the mp3 demo preview uses a cello sound (placing the transposition in the range of the baritone sax, though again, any saxophone is acceptable). A cello sound is used because samples of saxophone sounds generally leave much to be desired, and they are most commonly based on jazz tone qualities which would be completely inappropriate for this piece.
This product was created by a member of ArrangeMe, Hal Leonard’s global self-publishing community of independent composers, arrangers, and songwriters. ArrangeMe allows for the publication of unique arrangements of both popular titles and original compositions from a wide variety of voices and backgrounds.
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