Introduce yourself here.....

[britishcomposer]

Ah yes, I had forgotten that Dutton had embarked on a Matthews cycle!
As usual: when I have my broadcast recordings I don't care about any CD releases - except when extraordinary dear to me. (Just to save some money. )

[Dundonnell]

....and thanks very much for the Pickard Piano Concerto upload

[Dundonnell]

For couplings for the David Matthews Symphony No.7-

Why not........the Piano Concerto of 2010-20 minutes long- and the Sinfonia of 1996-10 minutes long.

[J.Z. Herrenberg]

Another great pleasure was meeting 'Herrenberg' twice too.

And a mutual pleasure it was, Jeffrey. Nice 'seeing' you here!

[semloh]

Thal, sadly I have not digitized but a handful of 78s.  And they were mostly popular bands and songs from the '20s.  I love that era and have a collection, also, of silent films on VHS and DVDs from that period.  ....
Jerry

I really enjoyed reading about you, Jerry, and pleased you started this thread. 

Like you, I'm also a fan of dancebands     I'm a (now passive) member of the American dancebands Yahoo e-list, and just love the flair and inventiveness of those musicians. This makes me a real sucker for cross-over compositions that combine classical and danceband/jazz idioms - whether its classical works utilizing popular styles or vice-versa. I love them
The Naxos CD Skyscrapers - Symphonic Jazz offers some of the less common classical American examples from largely "unsung" composers.

Although I don't care much for old movies, I do have quite a video collection of silent (and immediately post-silent!) comedies, and I'm not sure if that coincides with your interests.  The sight of Laurel & Hardy's car disappearing into what seemed a harmless puddle never fails to make me almost hysterical! My wife thinks my reaction is quite ridiculuous

[kolaboy]

Hi everyone.
I'm an artist (painter), born in 1960, who lives in western North Carolina. My interest in music (and painting) has spanned the entirety of my life. As a youth I was housebound due to various health issues, and as a result I pretty much read everything I could get my hands on - especially regarding the creators of music. I'm guessing I was the only teenage boy in Statesville who had a 4x5 foot poster of Niels Gade on his bedroom wall (self-made, of course) next to one of Suzi Quatro.
Anyway, a lot of these "peripheral" names are almost like distant relatives in my mind, and to finally live in an age where it is becoming possible to actually hear some of their works is beyond amazing.
Ironically, I've not painted many pieces directly related to specific composers (apart from a portrait of J.S. Bach's forgotten son Johann Gottfried Bernhard Bach. You gotta root for the underdog, you know).

Well, apologies for the ear bending. Just wanted to say "Hello", and to thank you all for making this such a great place to visit 

Danny

[kitmills]

I'm a full-time self-employed musician in Washington state, mid-30's, majored in composition a decade ago, and juggle careers in private drum teaching (bread-and-butter, and generally enjoyable), performing (drumset or orchestral, less about income than feeling like I'm using my playing skills), and composing (love/hate but am compelled to do, tiny yet absurdly gratifying royalty checks).  Perhaps I'm a bit of a freak as a drummer who loves--and knows--classical music.  I've gotten plenty of confused looks over the years from fellow musicians when I've suggested alternate chords or better counterpoint between different parts.

I'm a big fan of Vaughan Williams, Holst, and most of their generation, and was recently turned on to Geirr Tveitt and others (I have a strong Norwegian heritage) by a friend who's touring the U. S. and doing residencies in North America as a Norwegian Cultural Artist.  Following a link from the Scandia Symphony in New York brought me here in search of Johann Svendsen's cello concerto, and while I can't come often, I keep coming back here.  This is a great site!  One question: if I qualify as an unsung composer can I have my own thread and at least one or two unquenchable evangelists of my music?

[JimL]

If your music is tonal and in a Romantic (or Neo-Romantic) style, I would say yes.  If you're a dodecaphonist or atonalist, I, personally have nothing against it, but I can't vouch for the powers-that-be.  If a large number of your works enter the standard repertoire: no!

[Mark Thomas]

Kitmills (or amy I call you Kit?), you are very welcome to try us out with a couple of pieces and I'm sure that you'll get a kindly, but objective hearing. Evangelists are harder to come by!

[kitmills]

JimL - apart from a few symphonies I wrote under the name of Beethoven that seem to be consistently performed, I don't have anything in the current repertoire.

Mark - thanks for your kind note.  You may call me Kit, and of course, I don't seriously expect to enlist evangelists until I've either written music that merits evangelism, or 'til I've created a massive press machine that generates me-related hype ("The Justin Bieber of the Classical World!  Now in 3-D!").  The invitation to cast a piece or two upon the forum waters is thoughtful of you, but I will have to think of how best to do that...I have an almost comical history of inevitable technical failure at premieres, and thus only one or two pieces recorded decently. 

Hmm...well, you could try this download: http://www.c-alanpublications.com/mp3/18variations-full.mp3 

Entitled 18 Variations on an Original Romantic Theme, I wrote this piece for five-octave marimba (xylophone-like instrument, but mellower, for those who don't know) a couple of years ago for a marimba society that requested a virtuosic piece reminiscent of Liszt or Rachmaninov.  The .mp3 is a MIDI file of sampled marimba, so it sounds pretty good, but there are some weird spastic moments and abnormally fast or slow tempi that definitely weren't in the score!  Whenever I have a few spare thousands of dollars to buy my own instrument, I'll be sure to record a real performance to share.  [Note: This isn't probably my most representative work, but then, I dabble in everything.]

If this needs to be posted elsewhere, please do so.  Nor is it my intention to storm onto this forum site and hog all the space with my stuff.  There are unsung composers whose praises deserve to be sung far more than mine!

[Jimfin]

Well, I only found this site today, but I might as well introduce myself. I'm a 40-year-old teacher living in Japan, so here I have virtually no friends with any knowledge of British music. I have been a big fan since I was in my teens, at that time Elgar, Sullivan, Vaughan Williams and Havergal Brian dominated, but I have branched out to anyone starting from about Cipriani Potter up to about 1960, with a slightly reduced interest in more recent people. One of the fun things about being into this music for so long is seeing works that one has waited to hear for twenty years come out, an experience one cannot have if one is into pop (as you don't know the work existed beforehand) or mainstream (as 200 different recordings already exist). Currently basking in the joy of Robin Hood, McEwen and the new Dutton releases.

[Mark Thomas]

You're very welcome, Jim.

[Mark Thomas]

I suppose I'd better add my own pencil self-portrait:

I live in the Cotswolds in the UK. Growing up in an entirely unmusical household, I "discovered" music at university in Cardiff in the very early 70s, where I read chemistry (which has been of no use to me since the day I left as my career was in public transport!). I happened to have a friend there who played in the Welsh National Youth Orchestra and asked him about the fine music being used over the closing credits of a TV adaptation of "Ivanhoe". It turned out to be the finale of Tchaikovsky's Fourth Symphony. I bought an LP (Barenboim & the NY Phil.) and was hooked. Being a logical, scientifically-trained soul I bought all the Tchaikovsky symphonies (including the newly issued Bogatyryev reconstruction of "No.7" - what did I know?). I then went on to sample other symphonies written by composers living around Tchaikovsky's time and so within a few weeks I bought the pioneering Bernard Herrmann recording of Raff's No.5 Lenore. I absolutely loved it, went back to the shop to buy more Raff (as I had done with Dvorak, Schumann, Mendelssohn etc), only to be told that there was none. So began what has turned into a forty-odd year curiosity about unjustly neglected composers and Raff in particular. At my 60th birthday party (very recently!) my poor wife, who has had to live with my Raff-obsession all these years, described him to the assembled throng as "Mark's imaginary friend"!  On the internet, the evidence is my web site on Raff (www.raff.org), out of which grew UnsungComposers, when the old Raff Forum was killed off by hackers a few years ago.

I read music well enough to enjoy singing in a reasonably well respected local choir, but not well enough to understand anything more complicated than a vocal score. Over the years I've come to love most musical genres (the notable exception is lieder, which is still work in progress) but stylistically I'm most comfortable with determinedly tonal music written in the 19th and 20th centuries and I'm with Rossini - for me melody is the keystone. I respond to music primarily with my heart and the head comes a poor second.

[jerfilm]

Ah, Mark.......your profile sent me scurrying to the basement to retrieve a box of colored slides taken in and around Bourton-on-the-Water and Broadway - in another lifetime, of course.  What a lovely place to live. 

Jerry

[semloh]

I suppose I'd better add my own pencil self-portrait: ...............

Thanks, Mark - at last we know who you are!