Happy Canada Day/Fourth of July

[dj]

Hi, all:

Getting in a festive mood, here in Canada, as Canada Day is tomorrow. Then, of course, our friends south of the 49th celebrate on Wednesday.

So, I started thinking about putting together a new piece for the days, being the first new piece I've done in Composer 5.

The trick is: this is an old piece. Here's the story.

'Way back in the olden days, before wife, children, grey beard and aching knees (actually, one of them already ached, back then -- football injury), I was commissioned to create a musical for the hesqui-desqui-sesqui-centennial (175 years) of my home town of St. Thomas, Ontario.

One of the seminal events of the early days of the settlement was the War of 1812, so, as a part of the first act of the show, I and my composing partner Ron Dossenbach created a dance number called The War of 1812 Overture.

That was 43 years ago. I decided to dig out the hand-scratched original pages of it this past week and do some orchestration on the piano score. There are one or two surprises in it, with nods to Piotr Tchaikovsky, Alexandr Muir, Thomas Arne, and Anonymous.

Please watch/listen to it in Page View mode. It's much prettier, that way.

You can find a video with a fully realized orchestration (in Magix Samplitude Music Studio X8) and some graphics at https://youtu.be/Wsk1Otd5vAQ

In the meantime, Happy Independence Day, all you Yanks; Happy Canada Day, Canucks; and a Happy 1st of July/4th of July to everyone else.

Enjoy.

David

[rrayner]

Thanks for posting, David! A very interesting piece. After "watching" it via Composer, I took the trip to YouTube - a good move, as for my sound setup the orchestration came through better. Also, the "Cannon" shot at the end was more impressive than your tongue-in-cheek admonition in the score for "Cannon - if you have one" Happy Holidays! Ralph