Hazel Leach : Composer

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Bigband

Sweet for Evie

1999 was Ellington-year: a celebration of his music 100 years after his birthday. The music of Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn has always impressed me: their use of instrumental colours, the bluesy harmonies and especially their way of writing for the individual players in the band. I took the opportunity to write my own personal hommage to them and spent the year reading up on their lives. Ellington himself claimed that music was his mistress. Spare a thought then, for his legal wife Edna and his mistress Evie, forever relegated to second and third places.
Luckily for women these days, times have changed...

The piece owes much to Ellington and Strayhorn: the blues harmonies, the beautiful combinations of clarinets and muted trumpets, the sliding alto a tribute to Johnny Hodges. This was 'translated' beautifully by Corinna Danzer on the 2002 United Women's Orchestra cd "Virgo Supercluster".
I'm including an mp3 sample of the intro and .pdf files of the main theme and the first few pages of the score.

Original line-up: as, as/cl, ts, ts/cl, bs, bcl. 4 tp(flg), 3 tb, tba, pn, bs, dm.
Length: 5'40"

There is also a version for a 'normal' line-up (without the extra bass clarinet, bass trombone instead of tuba), and guitar and vibraphone parts are also available.
Information about ordering the music can be found on the "contact" page- see link above.

**Links**
United Women's Orchestra: about the band	"Virgo Supercluster" UWO cd

pdf file: Evie Leadsheet

mp3: Sweet for Evie intro

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pdf file: Evie: score pp 1-3