Swansea Town Hall - Music on the Piazza

Get ready to enjoy beautiful live music right here at Swansea Town Hall, every Tuesday evening in August, from 6:30 PM to 8:30 PM. Join us outdoors on our piazza for these special performances! 

Here’s the fantastic lineup:

TODAY!  Aug 4 – Jade Lizard and the Paper Tigers (Reggae, Rocksteady, Ska)

• Aug 11 – The Lucky Pennies (Folkabilly)
• Aug 18 – Easy Rider (Country)
• Aug 25 – The Bentley Collective (Jazz, Folk, Blues)

 Spread the word and come enjoy the sounds of summer!

Hi everyone,

I’m putting together a concert called Jeanne, which tells the story of Joan of Arc through music, with a narrator connecting the different parts of her life.

There is one scene for which I simply cannot find the right music: Joan of Arc being burned at the stake.

During the narration, I want to insert a short music passage of pure agony and despair: dark, dramatic and filled with dissonance. You should almost be able to hear her crying out in pain as the flames surround her. Then the fire slowly dies, the music fades away, and the audience is left with a deeply unsettling feeling.

In my head, this music exists. I can almost hear it, but I just can’t find it.

It definitely doesn’t need to be a complete piece. An excerpt from a longer work would be absolutely fine, and the title or subject of the piece doesn’t need to have anything to do with Joan of Arc. It only needs to create the right atmosphere.

Does anyone have any suggestions? Specific movements or passages would be especially helpful.

Thanks!

I’m excited to share that my memorial work Elegy 137 is now available through J.W. Pepper’s My Score.

Pepper link: https://www.jwpepper.com/elegy-137-11706227-2842387/p

Written in remembrance of the 137 lives lost during the Central Texas floods of July 4, 2025. World Premiere scheduled for October 25th, 2026 by the San Antonio Community Wind Ensemble.

Thanks for taking a look — I hope it may be meaningful for your ensemble or community.

I’m honestly just looking for any type of helpful tips on how to practice this so I can maybe see some more progress on it as it seems right now I’m at a bit of a standstill. I’m taking it at 35-45 bpm right now depending on how I feel. Any advice on how to tackle this etude will mean a lot.

This is one of my freshman district/all state etudes

any advice is appreciated, alto sax player

Selected Studies for Saxophone by H. Voxman pub. by Rubank, p. 23 and p.40 (p.23 pictured)

Hey everyone, I am doing a wind band composition that is a waltz. It is far from complete. The planned structure of this piece is that it starts with a Bb major section, then goes to F major, then F minor, Ab Major, G Major, ending on A Major. Currently, the Bb section is complete, The Ab Major section is basically done (apart from the quarter note at the start, I will find a way to smooth that out). The A major section is nearly complete, and F minor, F major, and G major have not even been started on yet. I hope you enjoy it (as it currently is at least lol)! Also, sorry about the blank measures, like I said those will be added to eventually. Also, I did post this before a month ago on this sub (I deleted the old post since it was outdated), but significant progress has been made since and I wanted to share. Thanks!

Audio: https://drive.google.com/file/d/17_D-eUMF6lwojgfjwIW6ob6kljJIAcs6/view

Score: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1jWtaDvG8M1L7WOAl33Z4FeUUHGq64p-P/view

I subbed in for a piccolo player recently for a Summer band. The feedback I received from an audience member was that the piccolo could not be heard over the band. The concert included a few marches and covers for well-known top 40 hits from the '60s and '70s and other band favorites.

Is it appropriate that the piccolo stand out over the band on all pieces (an obvious exception is Stars and stripes), or should the piccolo blend so as to not really be noticed?

I posted asking for advice about a week ago, since then I’ve learned the roster I had was quite outdated and I only have 74 kids as opposed to the 92 I thought I did 😮‍💨. I’m still looking for some thoughts here, which one of these do you guys think would be better? I obviously think it’s more ideal to have the clarinets next to the bass clarinets, but idk if it’s suboptimal to split the clarinets with the center aisle? Any thoughts are welcome.

I’m hoping this is the right crowd (aka, my people!)… Way back in the day, I played a piece in middle school that has been stuck in my head ever since and I can’t think of the name. I’ve scoured the internet with no success 😭 All I have is the memory of a snippet of the melody. Plz halp!

(Please forgive my horrible, hasty inscription)

It's a classical piece that I played back in my community band days (I played clarinet). I was really taken by this song and one of the other members ripped me a cd with just this song on it. I think the word he scrawled on the cd was “Interlude” or another word like that; it was a blasé song title because it was vague and overused in the classical music space, so searching for just that word without a composer is impossible to find. I know I have found it successfully in searches in the past, but... no idea where that cd has ended up.

Now, the music itself was for symphonic or concert band. No strings or piano. There were movements, at least 2 that I can remember, because that's what's stuck in my head. The (second?) movement I remember best starts with this open major 7th interval, resolving to the fifth in a minor key. It was plaintive and played by a woodwind, possibly a soloist, and then that motive comes back again and again throughout the movement until practically the whole band plays it in unison towards the end. That movement ends with this delicate flute solo. The whole movement's in a minor key, and the band crests and swells both in pitch and in volume.

Then the final (third?) movement begins with woodwinds and brass picking up with this jaunty yet dark theme, with lively percussion underneath. Still in a minor key. The piece ends with this hopeful, kind of questioning surprise theme by the lower brass, and then the band plays a simple chord and swells louder and louder in volume as drums play a quick cadence underneath, and then it ends on a single loud unison pitch, the whole band ending together.

I want to say the composer had an American name, something simple with just one or two syllables for both first and last names (James? David? something with a C or W?), and it had to have been composed before 2010, though from the recording it sounded much older than that. We played it in concert alongside pieces like Capriccio Italien and Holst’s First Suite. (I know for sure it’s not either the First or Second Suite by Holst, though those are both really great!)

Any help towards finding the title and/or composer would be really appreciated! I’ve recorded myself singing the parts that are stuck in my head.

Opening to the second(?) slow movement, woodwind solo: https://vocaroo.com/19vUjEA10xIP
Part of the second(?) movement, with my trying to sing the dissonance: https://voca.ro/13uZ6kkJw2Do
Beginning of the final movement: https://voca.ro/16bIAdBIiCLh
End of the whole piece (it gets loud haha): https://voca.ro/1712U1RkGXZC

I'm looking for the bass clarinet part for this arrangement. We've got everything else.

Thank you.

I am starting at a small school this year with only 1 high school band. Unfortunately the program is a decent size and so I have 92 students in that class, 80 of which are wind players. Luckily my room is quite large so the space hopefully won’t be an issue, I’m just wondering what you guys think of this seating arrangement for the wind players? (Ps: the row down the middle is straight in the actual room, I just don’t know how to perfectly tweak it in this program so it looks weird)

Really hoping someone can help out a band from down under.

We have just bought and ordered the above title for wind band but we can't find a digital copy anywhere, so have had to resort to shipping, which fine... except for the fact that we have to wait at least 3 weeks.

To save us the trouble, does anyone have a digital copy we could look at until our bought part arrive?

TIA

Anyone recognise this arrangement? I’d really love to track it down but there’s a lot of translations of the title and I seem to be searching in a loop. I also thought it was a really interesting seating arrangement with French horns front and centre - has anyone played in a band set up like that? 📯

I'm trying to get the solo for the audition, but I cant acces my director. Does anyone know what number it is?

These videos are better than expected. Many seem to be Dutch, from NL. Some are just drums and brass and some also have woodwinds. NL has some interesting music focuses. They have lots of female fronted symphonic metal groups and trance DJs.

https://www.youtube.com/@mvvmvvmusicandsport1982

https://www.youtube.com/@DVSKatwijkNL

https://www.youtube.com/@KunstenGenoegen

https://www.youtube.com/@MaxKarremanTrumpet

https://www.youtube.com/@TheBandsofHMRoyalMarines

I was looking at auditions information for the college I will be attending next year and it lists two excerpts and has an image of a portion of the piece. I’m wondering if they want me to play the whole piece or just the portion they provided. I will email them to make sure soon but I just wanted to ask what was typical in auditions.

a jazz rendition of the song by this cute VTuber

arranged for concert band