Piano Solo - Level 3 - Digital Download SKU: A0.940721 Composed by Julia Muench. 20th Century,Concert,Contemporary,Instructional,Standards. Score. 2 pages. NJ Original Music #3415559. Published by NJ Original Music (A0.940721). Echoes of Arcturus The Bear Constellation in North American winter skies,  is an accessible and lovely shorter recital piece for the advancing intermediate piano student. The use of the higher piano registers in the beginning lends a unique ethereal quality. The change of meter from 3/4 to 7/8 halfway through,  adds an interesting feel to the piece.  Could also be played as part of a church service ( Unitarian, Methodist) The choice of Eb as the key signature gives it a lovely lullaby/nocturne mood. The live performance of Echoes of Arcturus may be viewed on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMZEGXC9f5w  Julia Muench currently resides on the piano faculty at the Monmouth Conservatory of Music (now under the Count Basie Theatre umbrella) in Red Bank, New Jersey, with a large piano student class.Her more recent musical activities besides composing, involve extensive piano teaching and giving piano recitals. The past two years, she has spent a good deal of time traveling in and out of the country. Italy and Chile have been among her destinations abroad. She performed a piano concert including her own composition, Nautilus Dances, as part of the Utopia Exhibit ( focusing on German Emigration to the US in the 1830's) in Washington DC's German Museum and at the Missouri history Museum in St. Louis, MO.Her latest piano concert in Red Bank, NJ featured composers Chopin, Debussy and Khatchaturian. Many of her performances may be viewed on youtube under Julia Muench. She has her own musical article blog on Wordpress under musicflower.

Piano Solo - Level 2 - Digital Download SKU: A0.940723 Composed by Julia Muench. Contemporary. Score. 2 pages. NJ Original Music #3415599. Published by NJ Original Music (A0.940723). Great for waking interest in that particular piano student and a really fun way to explore the pentatonic scale and 9th chords on the piano. Cross overs abound! I wrote this descriptive piece in particular for a student I was teaching, Elsa S., who ended up performing it on her Spring recital. Julia Muench currently resides on the piano faculty at the Monmouth Conservatory of Music (now under the Count Basie Theatre umbrella) in Red Bank, New Jersey, with a large student class.Her more recent musical activities besides composing, involve extensive piano teaching and giving piano recitals. The past two years, she has spent a good deal of time traveling in and out of the country. Italy and Chile have been among her destinations abroad. She performed a piano concert including her own composition, Nautilus Dances, as part of the Utopia Exhibit ( focusing on German Emigration to the US in the 1830's) in Washington DC's German Museum and at the Missouri history Museum in St. Louis, MO.Her latest piano concert in Red Bank, NJ featured composers Chopin, Debussy and Khatchaturian. Many of her performances may be viewed on youtube under Julia Muench. She has her own musical article blog on Wordpress under musicflower.She is a long time ASCAP member, where she was recently awarded and ASCAP writer's award for 2009/10. Julia has a MMA Degree from the University of Miami and has been composing since she was in her teens. She works regularly with ballet dancers at the Academy of Dance Arts in Tinton Falls, NJ.

Piano Solo - Level 5 - Digital Download SKU: A0.1255025 Composed by Carl Sigman, Matt Malneck, and Robert Maxwell. Arranged by Timothy Stapay. Broadway,Film/TV,Multicultural,Musical/Show,Singer/Songwriter,Standards,World. Score. 6 pages. Timothy Stapay #848614. Published by Timothy Stapay (A0.1255025). This is an arrangement of Shangri-la a mystical city of eternal life and love.  This mystical land was featured in the movie Lost Horizon.Shangri-La is a popular song written by bandleader Matty Malneck and Robert Maxwell in 1946 with lyrics by Carl Sigman.  The melody was used as the theme song for The Jackie Gleason Show and Shangri-La is also associated with the movie Lost Horizon and the novel by James Hilton.The term comes from Shangri-La as the hidden valley of delight in James Hilton's 1933 novel Lost Horizon. The term Shangri-La, especially in the 1930s and 1940s, was slang for heaven or paradise, and the song is about the joy of being in love.Shangri-La is a fictional place in Tibet’s Kunlun Mountains described in the 1933 novel Lost Horizon by English author James Hilton. Hilton portrays Shangri-La as a mystical, harmonious valley, gently guided from a lamasery, enclosed in the western end of the Kunlun Mountains.  Shangri-La has become synonymous with any earthly paradise, particularly a mythical Himalayan utopia – an enduringly happy land, isolated from the world. In the novel, the people who live in Shangri-La are almost immortal, living hundreds of years beyond the normal lifespan and only very slowly aging in appearance.Ancient  Tibetan scriptures mention the existence of seven such places as Nghe-Beyul Khembalung.   Khembalung is one of several Utopia beyuls (hidden lands similar to Shangri-La) which  Tibetan Buddhists believe that Padmasambhava established in the 9th century CE as idyllic, sacred places of refuge for Buddhists during times of strife.