Creature
Concert Band - Digital Sheet Music

Concert Band - Level 5 - Digital Download

SKU: A0.927173

Composed by George Willson. 20th Century,Contemporary. Score and parts. 98 pages. George Willson #4601563. Published by George Willson (A0.927173).

Creature began as a joke in high school between a friend of mine and me where we described the radical mood swings of our band directors as a "creature" coming forth from inside of them. Think about the alien from Alien 3 where it opened its mouth and its "tongue" was a little alien head with teeth of its own. I thought it would be fun to write a piece of music around this creature, so I wrote a short series of story beats and then some music around it. The full story is, unfortunately, lost to history, but the music survived the twenty-five years since its original composition, and in honor of my young self, I merely edited any typos and left it just as I wrote it when I was a seventeen-year-old high school senior. This was my first, solo-written, full band composition, and one can hear that I was a huge fan of Igor Stravinsky.

This is not an easy piece to play. It has time changes aplenty, fast runs in the upper woodwinds, very exposed parts in nearly every section, large interval leaps, and spares hardly anyone's range. The eighth note remains constant across the 4 and 8 time signatures, and the breakdown of the complex time signatures is apparent in how the eighth notes are barred. As a conductor, it will be challenging as well, but I survived it on two occasions as both a senior in high school and in front of a military band, so it can be done.

So enjoy the musical story of a creature who attacks people in its rage and hunger before it is chased and defeated by an angry mob ... but did it really die?

George Willson has been an performer, composer, and conductor for thirty years in various mediums and ensembles.

Mp3 provided is a midi extracted from the composition program.