City Scenes

A range of fabulous educational and concert guitar music by the UK's top guitar composers, educators and performers.

Rush originally started out as a study for the right hand thumb. The piece opens in five with adarting, weaving bass melody and harmonic language similar to the Cuban feel of Leo Brouwer's first study. As the piece progresses, I played around with some poly-rhythms and syncopations in 3/4 time with a Venezuelan flavoursimilar to the music of Antonio Lauro.

The title Metropolis was created, like many of my pieces, retrospectively. It was suggested to me by Mark Eden and resonated with much of what I felt the piece conveyed,essentially the non-stop hustle and bustle of a musical 'city' where influences combine from many different ages and musical cultures.

The initial ideas for the piece came from trying to formulate a study for the left hand where the 4thfinger jumps from the first string to the lower bass strings. As is often the case, on finishing the piece I now hear many things which although not used consciously, have emerged in the music to remind me of music I have listenedto or studied in the past.

At various points a musical quote taken from the end of the first movement of La Catedral by the Paraguayan guitarist and composer Agustin Barrios Mangore appears, which I have syncopated and used as amusical junction, with the music taking a different direction each time it appears.

Towards the end of the piece the performer combines left hand hammered chords with right hand finger clicks and tamboura, creating avisual juggling effect when performed. Something resembling the sound of a siren can then be discerned before the piece moves into the closing E major section. I did most of the work for the final version of this piece in theautumn of 2005, just after the birth of my second daughter!

I think the music reflects something of the pace of my life around then! Birds Flew Over The Spire is a short, lyrical piece which was also