Alexa’s Music Box – Now with a duet!

This week was fairly busy for me, and so I unfortunately didn’t have time to arrange anything new for my Representation Remixes series. However, yesterday, one of my young students helped me sort out a very simple duet for “Alexa’s Music Box” by Jean Coulthard. I want to stress how simple this duet is–I basically took the remaining notes from the piano arrangement and tweaked the octaves slightly–but simple’s better than nothing, right?

flute-Coulthard-Alexa’s Music Box-Optional duet – for (slightly more advanced) flute

Have a great weekend, everyone!

Representation Remixes: Alexa’s Music Box, by Jean Coulthard

I’m back again this week with another arrangement to fill out the holes in the flute (and hopefully later piano) repertoire! This time, I took a look at Canadian composer Jean Coulthard‘s piano piece, “Alexa’s Music Box.” I found the piece in Music of Our Time, published by the Waterloo Music Company, Ltd.; it would be ideal for flute students playing at a Grade 1 RCM level.

flute-Coulthard-Alexa’s Music Box – Part for solo flute.

I’m looking into adding a very simple teacher duet part, also for flute, but I need to road test it with one of my flute students first. I’ll be sure to update the post if it turns out to be a worthwhile addition!

Representation Remixes: Skipping Rope, by Yelena Fabianovna Gnesina

Over the past half of a year, I’ve been making a real effort to expand my music collection to reflect the composers I’ve featured in my History Hunt series (and hope to continue to feature when time and health permit!). It’s been a real challenge, though, especially with my flute music collection. There are real gaps–so much so that I recently had to apologise to one of my students for only giving her music by white men to play so far when neither of us fit that bill.

So I’ve started to do some very simple arrangements to fill in the gap a little. Normally, I keep my arrangements as a perk for members of my studio, but addressing the incredible imbalance in core flute repertoire is something I feel very strongly about. So, I’d like to make these arrangements generally available.

The first one I’ve completed is “Skipping Rope,” by Yelena Fabianovna Gnesina. It’s found in the Grade 5 Royal Conservatory of Music repertoire book; the arrangement should be suitable for flute students playing at a Grade 1/2 RCM level.

flute-Gnesina-Skipping Rope (Flute and Piano parts)
flute-Gnesina-Skipping Rope-flute part (Flute part alone)

I hope you all enjoy, and please feel free to send me feedback! I don’t arrange music as often as I should, and so I could do with some constructive criticism.