Delmar Boulevard Blues Premiere and Score Release

The St Louis Classical Guitar Society premiered my work Delmar Boulevard Blues on April 30, 2022. It’s a fun but melancholy bluesy jazz piece in the classical tradition of William Grant Still’s Lenox Blues. For mixed levels and an optional divisi part. It is inspired by the redlining Delmar Divide street that cuts St Louis across racial and class lines. For mixed levels and optional soloing instrument.

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Not One Shall Leave video and score release

This is pretty cool and just out today. The Ex-Aequo Artists guitarist collective undertook a MASSIVE project to commission 9 Black American composers to write new works for the classical guitar: Changing the Canon. I was one of them and wrote a piece based on a scene from Hindu scripture. You can see all 9 works in the playlist at the side. Bravo to Phil Goldenberg for performing my incredibly difficult piece with such tremendous skill and musicality and congrats to all involved. BRAVI!

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Take the rough with the smooth.
Music is my profession, and what I love to do. All the rest that goes with it is either fortunate or unfortunate. You have to take the rough with the smooth. I wouldn’t do it unless I got something from it—and I do. I’m stimulated by the feeling of an audience in a concert, that I can give pleasure to them. It gives me a pure yet beautiful reason for the pursuit of excellence. I have to play the guitar often, and that is something I really want to do well. I suppose I’m “locked in,” but it sometimes gives me immense pleasure to be so confined!
— Julian Bream Interviewed in Classical Guitar Magazine (May-June 1983)
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New Video: Byblos by Mary Kouyoumdjian

Premiered at the 2020 Guitar Foundation of America convention, this video performance depicts the ancient Lebanese city of Byblos. Kouyoumdjian had traveled there before composing this piece for Duo Noire and electronic backing track.

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