“Chop Suey!” is a highly successful metal song from Armenian-American rock artists, System of a Down. A favorite of mine and my high school rock band members, I arranged it for orchestra in my junior year of high school. My old band mate and orchestra stand partner, a music education major at UW-Whitewater, asked me to arrange the song for a cello ensemble for his senior recital. I gladly obliged, writing for a cello quartet plus one cello to perform a percussive accompaniment. I played the percussive part, and the rest of the ensemble came from the cello section at Whitewater. The piece was a wildly successful closer to a fantastic recital. Read the rest of this entry »

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Irresolution first began as a duet written with a floor mate from the dorms my freshman year. We worked on the guitar chord progression together, he wrote some vocals, and I wrote the cello part. During the Fall 2005 semester, I reinvented the piece by finding the original cello part, and piecing together the rest. The acoustic guitar part is similar to the original, and the piano melody is based on the original vocal melody, or at least what I remember of it. The mandolin and classical guitar parts were added to better use my fellow members of the Contemporary Music Ensemble, whose performance of this piece can be heard on the CD. Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Classical, Pop | Tagged cello, chamber orchestra, live recording, original, performance | No Comments »