Mud Turtle Quintet debuts String Songs

I am grateful to my new friend Marc Rosenberg for delving into one of my more ambitious works, String Songs. The Mud Turtle Quintet, led by Marc, presented the songs in concert on April 8 at the Spring Branch Performing Arts Center in Houston. Mud Turtle Quintet includes guitarist Marc Rosenberg, and violinists Sean O’Neal and Rachel Shepard, violist Faith Jones, and cellist Vyacheslav. I met Marc at the Classical Minds Festival last summer in Houston.

Purchase String Songs and other works for strings and guitar on this website. Click for a complete list of such works.

Mud Turtle Quintet | Return to Nature Concert

Song Arrangements for Strings

String Songs are arrangements of seven songs that I wrote between 1996 and 2007. The first String Song is my first actual song and the second uses a poem of Wendy Holmes. Holmes is a lifelong friend of my wife, and fabulous artist/photographer. The next five songs are all from a 2006 composition entitled Syzygy, which is a song-cycle on poetry written by my wife, Nancy Knowles. The treatment of each song varies to create a constantly changing texture throughout the 23 minutes of the work.

1. Song without words quintet
2. Advice trio
3. Watershed at Brewbakers duo
4. Architecture quintet
5. Caramelo quartet
6. Remembered wellness quintet
7. Orbs in syzygy quintet

The quintets use the full resources of the string ensemble and are lavishly adorned with polyphonic lines, textural octaves, and enhancements to the guitar accompaniments. Advice, a trio, is virtually identical to the original piece for guitar with soprano and baritone voices. [There is also an arrangement for piano and oboe and bassoon.] A jazzy duet between violin and guitar follows, with strummed chords and elaborated violin part with two-part polyphony and melodic flourishes. The rest are full ensemble except the cello is tacit in #5, in which the strings are muted in this peaceful setting.