Cello Expressions
I played cello for more than a decade before singing in a choir. Another canon of music emerged when I joined the USC University Chorus to complete the performance requirement for my music minor in 2015. I took a choral arranging course from composer Morten Lauridsen to gain context. My composing and arranging style evolved to take inspiration from a…
The Cello Expressions Sheet Music Library has opened with a table view listing all sheet music in the library since its beginnings in 2012. As the library has grown past 100 pieces (currently around 120 pieces), this format has gradually become less effective. New pieces jump to the top of the list as older pieces become lost in a sea…
With another influx of new cello music since my update last year, it’s time to highlight the next set of additions to the Cello Expressions Sheet Music Library. This posts covers works published between summer 2020 and summer 2021. You’ll also find a set of newly-available copyrighted arrangements that I wrote about last week. The library continues to expand in…
Building on the collection of copyrighted music that I published last year, six additional arrangements for cello ensembles are now available. These pieces were created for special concerts by the Boulder Cello Project. The five Disney arrangements premiered at Chase the Music concerts for children with critical conditions. The concert recipients specifically requested each of these pieces. The final newly-published…
2020 has already been a productive year for the Cello Expressions Sheet Music Library. After publishing over a dozen copyrighted pieces in January, I located several older pieces and a few new works for publishing this spring. Combined with cleanup of older lower-quality arrangements, the overall quality of cello music available in the library is substantially improved. The additions feature…
My composing and arranging style has gone through several phases. The descriptions below provide context to the style and approach of my compositions and arrangements based on the year published, and may assist with selecting music and performance approach. Linear Volumes (2009 – 2012) Most of my music from this period was written for my cello quartet. Quantity and variety…
I have developed an extensive library over the past decade of arranging cello ensemble sheet music. Many of the pieces in my library are arrangements of copyrighted songs and their sheet music can’t be distributed for free. These were originally created for specific ensembles that arranged for usage rights, such as the Boulder Cello Project. I previously listed these items…
Cello Expressions has existed in its current form for nearly six years. After briefly serving as the website for my high school cello quartet, it has been the home of my various digital projects for most of its existence. As this site and its content reach a level of relative digital maturity, it’s time to update the status if its…
After nearly two years of planning, false starts, and development, I finally launched a new sheet music library. In this post, I’ll discuss the development and implementation process, design decisions, and how I created this project in a way that the source code will be available for anyone to use for free. History I started posting my cello ensemble compositions…
Since the Boulder Cello Project is facing a shortage of accessible, mixed-difficulty-level sheet music, and I’ve been wanting to do more short compositions, I’ve decided to write a series of etudes for cello choir. Each one has a hard one-page limit to keep things well-scoped, and to force my ideas into succinct presentations that could be expanded into full pieces at some point.
Being for cello choir, they’re designed to work best for large groups of cellists (I’d generally consider at least 3 per part to be a good threshold between “ensemble” and “choir”). Being mixed-difficulty-level, they’re most appropriate for groups of cellists with widely differing abilities and musical backgrounds (Boulder Cello Project has adult beginners, professionals, and everywhere in between).
To keep things interesting, I’m attempting to do one etude per day. And to also record each one (multi-tracking so that I can cover every part). So far, it’s going pretty well, other than the every day part. Here’s what I have so far:
Sheet music is available in my sheet music library: