Composer’s Note:

Music for a Midsummer Evening is a set of seven charming works for alto saxophone, horn, and piano. Colorfully titled, each of the seven pieces was selected, and then considerably expanded, from a collection of over 50 very brief “occasion pieces” the composer wrote over the years to celebrate special events in the lives of family and friends.

The pieces include, among others, a Gentle Dance, a tempestuous Barcarole, an Interrupted Waltz, and a Little March.

The seven pieces were chosen in order to incorporate the particular colors of the horn and saxophone, and for balance and variety in terms of tempo, texture, and dynamics.

One of the pieces, Maddox the Orbiter, is for solo piano.

The music is marked by flowing melodic lines, and is comfortably tonal — grounded in traditional harmony, but spiced with dissonance that reflects a contemporary musical vocabulary.