Composing Spotlight: Unfinished Works

Here are more unfinished fragments from long-abandoned Finale folders. The first is the introduction from a samba, which I started in my senior year of high school:

Unfinished Samba (0:43 MP3)

This piece never got further than the introduction for one likely reason: I was too inexperienced to actually write a samba. Sure, it's easy to write a chord while the trumpet player pretends to be Rafael Mendez, and it's also easy to copy the piano part out of a Victor Lopez samba chart. After that, some compositional skill may be required.

Next up was a trombone-euphonium duet from undergrad:

Unfinished Fragment (0:16 MP3)

This was the first stab at a piece for Dave Day and Dave Ball, which I ultimately deemed to be "pretty lame" and eventually morphed into Clown Facades.

The third fragment was the introduction to a Chick Corea-eque brass ensemble piece that I had planned to include in my fifth year recital:

Unfinished Fragment (0:18 MP3)

I think the reason that this one died on the vine was that it's more fun to listen to music where chords include all off the white keys on the piano than it is to write that type of music. I ditched it pretty quickly, and started on a more Stan Kenton-esque piece, Vanishing Point, which was far more fun.

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