The Parade of the Wooden Soldiers is a fife solo that was a very popular in the 1970s in fife & drum competitions. It was the first one I played when I won my first competitive medal, a silver, at age 11. I lost to the top fifer by 2 points ... and he was 7 years older than I.

Parade of the Wooden Soldiers

Columbia Polka was a solo that was very popular  in the 1970s competitions. It had been the piece played by Mike Bonomo when I was junior to him in St. Benedict's Fife & Drum in the 1970s. It was common for a soloist to have "ownership" of a piece until they retired or chose something different. When Mike left the corps, Columbia Polka was mine. I used it perhaps 2 years in competition. It's a lovely tune, based on the trumpet polkas of the 1930s and shows off the triple-tonguing that soloists were expected to play.

Columbia Polka

This is an arrangement of a variety of sources that I got from fifer Geo Carteris when I was probably 15 or 16 years old. It is an amalgam of playing from several sources John McDonagh used, including his own Yankee Doodle Around The World, which he did for the NY Regimentals. It's a dandy piece with "snorts," or audible tones you hum while playing. Apologies that the ending is clipped. The masters aren't in the best of shape.

Yankee Took A Drink

An arrangement of tunes with the sole design of playing sustained 16ths with clear articulation. Ending, I'll admit, is my own composition, whose purpose is to show octave change in the middle of a run, whose accent replicates the sound of a drum rudiment merely by changing pitch.

Step by Step

An amusing tune whose sole purpose was to compete in the Northeastern, a title I had won several times. I believe this was my 6/8 piece (you needed to play a 2/4 and 6/8 in the contest) for a couple of years until I learned Along Came A Spider. This piece is a blend of a few tunes that were being used including The Whistler and his Dog, Pop Goes The Weasel, and Three Little Drummers. The title comes from having seen so many NY Regimental arrangements named Band-this or Band-that. I figured it was unlikely there was a Band 36....and I chose Roman numerals just to have more fun.

Band XXXVI

This tune, Douglas, was composed by John J. McDonagh specifically for the fife. I played it in competition probably two or three times, until I arranged and learned Hora Staccato, which was my signature piece for several years. McDonagh wrote the piece and named it for his childhood friend and NY Regimental comrade, Jim Douglas, one of the finest fifers of his day. It's a pretty dazzling piece that would still be effective today.

Douglas

In the mid-1970s I was enthralled with Michaela Petri and her recorder performances. Her articulations and mastery of what appears to be a simple instrument were mind-blowing. This was one of the pieces I heard her play and decided to arrange it for the fife.

Czardas

John McDonagh wrote this piece as a way to show off the 10-hole fife. It was my signature competition piece for many years and I often played it in tandem with Hora Staccato. I got the music from John directly because he had heard my playing and wanted to me to take it on. I was about 16 years old at the time. I had never heard anyone play it before in competition. I received John's special permission to record it.
After I retired from competition, with John's permission, I passed it along to another fifer, Catherine Cuccia, to play. I presume she did, though never heard anyone else perform it. It's a marvelous piece responsible for many competitive titles.

Along Came A Spider

This was the piece I came to be most known for in the years I competed. It was first introduced to me by my instructor, the late Frank Grady, when I was 15 years old and was the reason I won my first Northeastern title ... and nearly every one of them after that. With this piece I had an unprecedented seven-year run where I was undefeated in every solo competition I participated in. There's a great back story to how I learned how to play this piece. Buy me a beer some day and I'll tell it to you. ;)

Hora Staccato

This was a hoot to play and compose. One of the primary fife solos of the early 1970s was Steeplechase Polka, which I had a played a few times. Somewhere I came up with the idea of turning this solo into a quartet requiring some very adept fifing. What came out was this, which I not ever heard all together until I was in the RCA studio and recorded it. I played all 4 parts, one on top of the next. The mix is admittedly awful, but the insanity of this idea I think is well represented in a few very usable ideas and some that really should have stayed off the page. No one has ever given this a try in competition or performance.....thank goodness. ;)

Steeplechase Quartet

I'm not at all sure how or why I put this together, but clearly it's a number of different bits from different tunes that I suspect I liked for one reason or another and chose to cobble together. Nevertheless, it's not out of the realm of reasonable. ;)

Dave Migoya

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