The Ensemble Concert Book Series

A BIT OF HISTORY,  by David P. Miller

IF YOU WERE WONDERING where the idea for the Ensemble Concert Book series came from, it's an evolution of several other concepts, brought together for this series.

First, I began to notice that when we played concerts with our community band or stage band, the tunes that were most popular with the audiences were tunes they recognized, tunes they already knew, and could sing or hum along with in their minds.

Sure, we can introduce new music to our audiences, but we have to limit this to only a few tunes per concert. Mostly, they want to hear familiar things.

Next, and seemingly unrelated, our oboe player wanted to have an arrangement of a particular movie theme done as an oboe solo. So I had an arranger friend of mine contact the copyright holder, a major studio, and ask for "Permission to arrange." They wrote back, sure, you can have permission to arrange. All you have to do is PAY US $125, then your arrangement will be considered a work for hire, we will own it, and you cannot publish it or play it in public without our permission.

We said thanks but no thanks.

Third, I finally realized that there are a great number of tunes in the public domain, tunes for which we don't need permission to arrange, and a large number of these tunes are STILL tunes that most people today recognize and are familiar with.

The first light bulb came on.

I began to assemble a list of these tunes, tunes that were in the public domain, that most people today would recognize and like.

This list eventually grew to over 200 tunes!

From this came the concept of my American Frontier Suite series, of which I have already completed the first four of 22 planned volumes. Please see the information in the column to the right (the grey column) for more information on these works for concert band.

Fast forward to 2009.

More and more of our band members expressed an interest in playing with a small ensemble, to go play for the folks in retirement homes, nursing homes, hospitals, etc. Sure, we can buy books from the Salvation Army and the Moravian Church, books that allow you to put together a group of any four instruments and just go play.

There were three major problems with these books. First, the tunes were only Christmas carols, church hymns, or a few patriotic pieces. Second, the tunes were generally only eight or sixteen bars, and were nowhere nearly long enough to keep from seeming like they were over before they'd begun. And finally, the tunes were written for accompaniments to four-part singing harmony, so they were nothing more than a simple declaration of the tunes, with no true "arranging" or use of colorful harmonies or rhythmic patterns.

The second light bulb came on.

With this list I had already compiled of public domain tunes that most people recognize and like, I had plenty of material to put together NEW books for small ensembles, using tunes that are more than just Christmas carols or hymns or patriotic tunes. I realized we could also use more than four parts for better chords, and we could use more interesting rhythmic patterns.

And so the idea for the Ensemble Concert Book Series was born.

This concept has now to the point that you can take pretty much any group of five instruments, as long as you can cover the range from bass to soprano, grab one of these books (one for each instrument), and go play a 45 minute concert, from the beginning of the book to the end.

With a break and narrations between the numbers, two books can give you a two hour concert.

Our initial plans have laid out the tunes for the first six "standard" books, plus three specialty books - a Christmas book, a Patriotic Concert book, and a Wedding book.

I realized there's no way I could write all these arrangements myself, so I'm putting out a "Call for Arrangers" through several channels, hoping I can find a number of people who want to help put this project together a lot more quickly than I could do it on my own.

It's a very exciting concept, and it has the potential to be something in demand by every school and community band in the nation, perhaps in the world.

Whether it will fly or flop remains to be seen. We are praying for fly.