down the garden path (intermediate brass soloist and fixed media)

Description

Perusal scores: trumpet perusal | euphonium perusal | tenor trombone perusal | tuba perusal | bass trombone perusal A French horn edition (and accompanying perusal score) will be published in early 2027.

Listen to reference recordings of down the garden path featuring Eris DeJarnett, trumpet, and Nick St. Croix, tenor and bass trombone:

Program notes:

down the garden path is an adaptation of the beginning of go to the garden, a solo I wrote in 2022. The first three minutes of that piece are all about growth and making a supportive, comfortable space where you can relax. I’ve thought for a long time that it would be an appropriate excerpt for intermediate musicians to play, but a few of the notational choices I made in the original would make the piece needlessly difficult for a less experienced performer to read.

In this new arrangement, I remove as many of those barriers as possible. Very little about the sound you’ll hear has changed, but the notes on the page have been expressed in friendlier ways. The fixed media accompaniment is exactly the same, so you’ll hear narrator Tess Galbiati take you on a short, peaceful journey to a lush, overflowing place. All versions of this piece encourage the performer to engage with the material at their own pace, and I hope to also leave space for audiences to grant themselves time to heal or rest no matter what else might be going on in the world.

For the performer, I hope down the garden path lets you explore at your own pace. As instrumentalists, it can be very easy to feel like we have to get as good as possible as quickly as possible, but doing what you can when you can is no less worthy of recognition than doing things “perfectly.” This piece should be fun and relaxing to play.

[Performance notes are available in the score, though I have intentionally set up the music so they are not strictly necessary.]

Thank you to the reviewers whose careful eyes made these adaptations great: Jared Sherman (euphonium), Nic Merle (tuba, https://nicmerletuba.com), and Nick St. Croix (bass trombone and tenor trombone).

(The photo used in the promo image and on the cover of the score was taken by me at Battle Ground Lake on unceded Cowlitz, Ichishkiin, and Chinuk Wawa land.)

Changes from the original go to the garden:

Across all versions:

• This edition is in 3/4, not 12/8
• Rests have been added to facilitate breaths while maintaining fluid lines
• Some splits have been added or slightly modified to avoid overly large (or unfamiliar) register leaps
• All text except for “subito” has been translated to English
• Explanations of fermatas and long pauses are directly in the score, to prevent confusion if a performer doesn’t have or doesn’t read the performance notes
• More plain language in the performance notes

For specific instruments, additional minor changes have been made:

• Tenor trombone: small alterations in lines (especially the 8th-note line down to the B natural) to make performance more feasible for small instrumentalists playing straight horns
• Bass trombone and tuba: some octave transpositions have been made to facilitate clean, clear lines

Known performances:

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