Carinhoso (Pixinguinha)

This was made as a present to someone wonderful. (: You can find more information on this song here, since I also made an arrangement of it for a flute quintet (where, following Classical convention, "flute quintet" denotes a clarinet quartet -- three soprano clarinets and a bass -- with an added flute). The present version, however, consists of me singing all of the parts, and I actually wrote notes on paper this time instead of just improvising it like Basic Blues, so it sounds much better. Also, it has words in Portuguese! It's a bit annoying that my singing range and my whistling range are incompatible in this song, but it doesn't actually hurt anything. All of it was sung (or whistled) directly as you hear it in the recording, except, like in Basic Jazz, for the bass notes, which were kicked down an octave, and the bass drum, which was kicked down two octaves. There is one run in the bass that kept getting really distorted when transposed, so that run was recorded a fourth higher than it ended up instead of an octave.

Listen to Carinhoso (right-click to download)

Carinhoso (Pixinguinha)

flute, 3 clarinets, bass clarinet

So once upon a time I had a clarinet quartet (for those of you who aren't well-trained in musical terminology, a clarinet quartet consists of four clarinets, which can be of various sizes -- this one contained three sopranos and a bass). We met once a week for half an hour each time for a semester, and we never performed, but I did get to write music for it -- nothing original, just arrangements. I figured I could transcribe some chorinhos, and those sound so much better with a flute that I figured I'd add one. Thus I wrote Carinhoso for mixed woodwind quintet (which is different from a "flute quintet", which would consist of five flutes, perhaps including a piccolo and an alto flute; this quintet only contains one flute and therefore it can't be a flute quintet). It can be said that chorinhos are to Brazilian music what ragtime is to American music. They sound quite similar, in fact. But like the Australian and European wolves, they're not related. Only later were chorinhos influenced by jazz and evolved into bossa nova. But anyway. Carinhoso is one of those "signature" Brazilian songs, something like Stars and Stripes forever in the US. It's about as famous as famous gets. I hope to be able to play it on guitar to a girlfriend at some point, but until then we'll have to be content with this recording.

Listen to Carinhoso (right-click to download)

UPDATE: While not played on guitar specifically, a much cooler, sung, recorded version (by me) is here!

Concerto de Choro

clarinet, piano

After listening to a CD of Brazilian guitar music in the summer of 2005, I decided that it would be cool to write a chorinho, and as a clarinet player, I wrote it for clarinet and piano. I made a concerto out of it because, hey, why not? So here are three chorinhos in a concerto, for clarinet and piano accompaniment. A chorinho is kind of like a rag -- it's explained below, since Carinhoso is a chorinho as well. The first movement is a fast, bird-like choro; the second is a melodious waltz; the third is a boisterous samba. The second movement in particular should quiet you critics that think I can't write melodies; it's one of the most beautiful things I've written. The movement titles are just colors -- the -inho ending is a diminutive, so the first movement is entitled Yellow Chorinho (with a diminutive yellow), the second, Black Choro (where "choro" rhymes with "ouro", gold, and Ouro Preto is the name of some city somewhere, maybe), and the third, Greenish Chorado (where -ado is the ending for the past participle). So not very meaningful, but very, very pretty!

Listen to Concerto de Choro - I - Chorinho Amarelinho (right-click to download)
Listen to Concerto de Choro - II - Choro Preto (right-click to download)
Listen to Concerto de Choro - III - Chorado Esverdeado (right-click to download)

Dunth Valsante

Full Band

Dunth Valsante is my third finished piece, composed in June of 2004, and it's just a light waltz. That's all it is, a light, fun waltz. It's somewhat Brazilian, though, and the first time through the trio, I tried to write a chorinho. I tried but failed, because a chorinho would be traditionally played by a flute and guitar, and the band doesn't have a guitar (nor did I want to add one just for this). So instead, I pretended that the clarinet section was a guitar, and I treated it accordingly. Hehehe.

"What is a dunth?" you may ask. A dunth is a word that has no rhymes. Month was a dunth before dunth, so dunth undunthes month. It's very simple. You can visit the Project Dunth page, as well. Spread the word. Listen to the piece.

There are some synchronization problems with the recording. I don't know why. Just imaging that it's being played by a crappy band.

Listen to Dunth Valsante (right-click to download)

Hai-Kai

2 trumpets, horn, trombone, euphonium, tuba

The 2007 entry to the BCMW contest, this time, is Brazilian. It's meant to sound like guitar music, and was inspired by such. It originally was going to be Haiku, but when I looked it up in Portuguese, it turns out that the poetic form in Brazil is something related but not identical called hai-kai, which has three lines but a less strict syllabic structure. You can probably tell by this page's colors that I like blue, so I wrote a poem (it's not very good, I'm sure), which translates roughly to "The morning sky/Shines on the ocean/Paints it blue". I know that HTML always messes up symbols, but I'm going to try to title it faithfully below anyway. The movements are named with the lines of the poem, and the only extramusical meaning I managed to insert was the sun in the first movement -- see if you can pick it out.

Listen to Hai-Kai - I - O céu da manhã (right-click to download)
Listen to Hai-Kai - II - Brilha no oceano (right-click to download)
Listen to Hai-Kai - III - Pinta-o de azul (right-click to download)