Name: CK's Melody live by RingMusic34
Duration: 5 min 41 s
Description: An arrangement of Charles Gates Dawes' "Melody in A Major" featuring Charles Kinzer on tenor saxophone

Tight Squeeze by Alex Shapiro (ASCAP)
Performed by Pacific Wind Band, Vu Nguyen, conductor.
Published by Activist Music LLC (ASCAP). All Rights Reserved.

"It has everything to do with a young gull who landed on a rock in front of my desk window as I was finishing this music, with a sizable flounder uh, floundering in his clamped beak. The rather goofy-looking bird was having a challenging time figuring out how to swallow his windfall. I said to the bird, "Wow, tight squeeze, eh?!", and immediately realized that all these notes that were cramming the score page would soon be squeezing through the musicians’ instruments, as snugly as a fat flounder in a gull's mouth. I also realized that talking to birds is pointless; they make lousy conversationalists."

Tight Squeeze is written for concert wind band and prerecorded track. It can be adapted for any size ensemble and instrument combination.

Learn more at: www.alexshapiro.org/Tight_Squeezepg1.html

Best of Pacific 2020

Tight Squeeze

Tight Squeeze - Shapiro - Pacific Wind Band

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An arrangement of Charles Gates Dawes' "Melody in A Major" featuring Charles Kinzer on tenor saxophone

CK's Melody live

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CHRONICLE
by Alex Shapiro

Premiere performance, August 16, 2024
International Women’s Brass Conference
Mito City, Japan

Gretchen Renshaw, tuba


“Chronicle" is an electroacoustic journey for solo tuba
commissioned by Gretchen Renshaw, 
and supported by an Odyssey Professorship at Hendrix College.

For more information about Gretchen Renshaw:
www.gretchenrenshaw.com

For more information about Alex Shapiro:
www.alexshapiro.org

Program note:

Our lives are ongoing collections of emotions. Some remain close to the surface as years pass, obvious and, for better and sometimes for worse, easy to trace. Other parts of our personal history fade to nearly imperceptible ghosts of memories. Shards of past events arise at unexpected moments; if we squint, their reflection catches the light. If we dare, we look closer.

A piece of music is the same as one's lifetime: as it moves forward, it carries the forensic evidence of its origins. CHRONICLE revisits its initial lyrical statements in unexpected ways. We cannot change our history, but we can alter our perception of it.

Chronicle

CHRONICLE - Alex Shapiro

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An adaption of the tango movement from The Treachery of Sounds, originally for Pierrot+ and electronics for the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble. This new version removes the electronics and expands the ensemble to a chamber orchestra. Premiered April, 2025, by Marc Sosnowchik and the University of Texas New Music Ensemble, Austin, TX.

CK's Melody live

RingMusic34

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