Douglas Lora : Baiao Guri for Guitar Ensemble(Collection Chuck Hulihan) : DOz

Douglas Lora

Les Productions D’Oz: Score and separate parts (12, 3, 3, 3, 3, and 3 pages respectively)

Set for five guitars of five groups, this piece by Lora is a lovely piece of writing .You can find two performances on YouTube, one conducted by Chuck Hulihan, whose collection this piece is in, as published by D’Oz.

With the fifth guitar part only tuning its 6^th string down to D, this rhythmic but very effective piece begins with a modern but friendly sound with moments that include the whole tone scale, just to make the key initially a little difficult to grasp but pleasant nonetheless.

With guitars 4 and 5 providing the rhythmic but gentle introduction, guitars 2 and 3 then enter with some parallel thirds before the 1^st part, brings in the melody largely in semi – quavers. Although the speed is not too fast (crotchet at 82 beats a minute) the players all have to be moderately decent to make this intriguing piece sound as it should.

After a few pages the semi – quaver sections spread onto all the 5 parts, but always crossing over and under each other for a considerable interest factor. Halfway through the speed drops to ‘Slower’ (no metronome marking here) where a number of the parts have to do a strum over chords with the flesh of the thumb, until an accelerando takes us back to Tempo 1 for the final section, a varied version of the opening one, leading to a coda where everyone does a final strum with the thumb over an open D chords, from pianissimo to fortissimo over 4 beats.

This is a nice piece, definitely one for your group to have a go at, if they can cope with a few difficult bits and so I can definitely recommend it as a piece to have a go at. I’m sure any audience would really enjoy it!

Chris Dumigan