SKU: A0.845962

Exile is AddieRose Forstman's expression of frustration about the difficulty she experienced trying to become a working classical singer after graduating with degrees from two prestigious schools. The text alternates between cliched phrases meant to be encouraging and her true feelings of being ripped at the seams and wanting to scream. It's a dissonant song, in keeping with the feeling of excruciatingly extended exile from her true craft and calling..

SKU: A0.1434508

Performed by Skillet.  This Concert Band Scores accompanies the SATB/Piano Score with parts for 2 Trumpets, Trombone, Alto Sax, Tenor Sax, Baritone Sax, Synth, Guitar, Bass, Drums and Percussion.  

This song is about feeling like a monster on the inside.  The song refers to a secret side, no control, ugly beast, scratching walls, hiding under the bed, a nightmare, wanting to be saved, darkness, razor-sharp teeth, no one to hear a scream.  

This arrangement includes vocal features and a dance break.  This arrangement is designed for high school or college show choir, concert choir or community choir.  SATB/Piano Score also available.  Performance time is approximately 2:45.

SKU: B0.PDF-BAND111

8.5 x 11 inches.

Move over Aunt Rhody. Here comes the Doom Rider! Take your Beginning Band, students on an excursion into a fantasy world where the Doom Rider rules. While this piece sounds like it is written for more advanced players, it is easily accessible by 1st year students. Instrument ranges stay within the 1st six notes of the concert Bb scale and melodic fingering patterns are very playable. Drama, special sound effects, an audience jarring scream, and the big accelerando to the end will leave your audience believing that they've actually seen the Doom Rider!.

SKU: LV.4933

Oh Mama! Oh Mama! Oh Mama! The Excruciatingly Funny Song. By J.F. Mitchell. Published 1886 by Willis Woodward & Co., 842 & 844 Broadway in New York. Composition of strophic with piano and voice instrumentation. Subject headings for this piece include Courtship, Love, Clothing & dress, Deception. First line reads If you look at a girl now-a-days she will scream..

About The Lester S. Levy Collection

The Lester S. Levy Collection of Sheet Music consists of over 29,000 pieces of American popular music. Donated to Johns Hopkins University Sheridan Libraries, the collection's strength is its thorough documentation of nineteenth-century American through popular music. This sheet music has been provided by Project Gado, a San Francisco Bay Area startup whose mission is to digitize and share the world's visual history.

WARNING: These titles are provided as historical documents. Language and concepts within reflect the opinions and values of the time and may be offensive to some.

SKU: BJ.1351

8.27 x 11.7 inches.

In 2017, I was commissioned by the Svanholm Singers to write a work for inclusion in a concert marking 70 years since the proclamation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Choosing a text was difficult. I came across upon a poem by American poet Maya Angelou, but it struck me as being too powerful and emotional for the music I was writing to carry it; everything I composed sounded banal next to Angelou's words.

I soon realized that I could use silence to enhance the text, rather than heaping layers and layers of music upon it. Silence is both terrifying and serious - in a sense, it is the only adequate counterpoint to the poetry.

So, I decided to build the piece on silence.
Though the beginning of the piece is the opposite of silence - a scream of desperation - I followed that outburst by cutting the poem's stanzas into single words, repeated in a different order each time, almost in the manner of a mantra.

Finally, they end up in the right order and suddenly the words take on their rightful meaning. I hope, in this way, the music is equally powerful as the words.
Son to Mother has been well-received and has gone on to become one of the most widely performed pieces I have written. It has been performed at various festivals and in various countries, including Taiwan, France and China - where it only just made it past the government censors.
Also available for mixed choir.
Henrik Dahlgren is a Swedish composer, born 1991. He has been studying at the Academy Of Music in Malmo with Prof. Rolf Martinsson and the Royal College Of Music in London with Dr. Haris Kittos. Henrik started his musical career as a drummer and has ever since worked in a very wide range of different genres and styles, both as a performer and as a composer.