Description
“I have been very fortunate and professionally blessed to have five wonderful woodwind colleagues at Arizona State University: Elizabeth Buck, flute; Christopher Creviston, saxophone; Joshua Gardner, clarinet; Martin Schuring, oboe; and, Robert Spring, clarinet. Together, we presented numerous woodwind recitals featuring all six of us in various combinations of duos, trios, quartets, and quintets. However, until now, we were never able to share the stage simultaneously. To remedy this, I arranged five movements of Stravinsky’s Suite No. 1 and Suite No. 2 for Small Orchestra for the instrumentation of the ASU woodwind faculty.
The source material is derived from Igor Stravinsky’s Three Easy Pieces (1915) and Five Easy Pieces (1917). These compositions were written as four-hand piano educational pieces for Stravinsky’s children. Stravinsky would play the more difficult accompaniments while his children played the simple melodies.
Stravinsky composed arrangements of several movements using these short eight pieces, but the best-known arrangements are Suite No. 1 (1921) and Suite No. 2 (1925) for Small Orchestra. The five dance movements in Suite for Woodwind Sextet are “true Stravinsky” in their wit, charm, and humor. “
