Thierry Tisserand : Swinging Rondo for 4 guitars: DOz

Thierry Tisserand

Les Productions D’Oz: Score and separate parts (14, 4, 4, 4, and 4 pages respectively)

Of course many of you will know the name of Thierry Tisserand for his wonderful pieces, many of which I have seen, and all of which I find lots of fun and great to play. Here he is writing a piece for 4 guitars ( or groups of guitars) with a swing rhythm and having a sound that really does bring you back to that lovely sound of the 30s and 40s.

It is quite a fast piece, at 136 crotchets a minute and is in B minor 4/4 time. It begins with a percussive stretch on guitar 2 before an octave bass line played on guitars 3 and 4 then leads to the melody entering on guitar 1 at bar 9.The swinging rhythm gives it a very friendly sound full of jazz like movements and harmonies. After everything being single notes , gradually certain parts have two notes but nothing throughout the entire piece uses 3 note chords or larger. There are a number of sections, as you might expect with a Rondo, but the main theme always returns, even though it is often slightly different each time it does. The final coda is exciting and leads to a fine conclusion destined to make an audience happy and I can see it being a real crowd pleaser.

Lovely music, not too hard to play but written in straight quavers, for the players to swing into triplet rhythm themselves, so providing that is not a problem for them, this piece should be lots of fun for all concerned.

Chris Dumigan