First Festival Solos for Alto Saxophone

Description

Alto Saxophone, Piano — An essential part of any good instrumental musicprogram is for the students to play a solo with pianoaccompaniment. Having students play in a smallchamber-music setting is a very beneficial exercisetoward improving the student’s overall musicianship.Many states have solo and ensemble festivals wherestudents can play for a judge and receive feedback ontheir performance. As part of the process of playing asolo with piano, students can improve many aspects oftheir playing such as tone quality, intonation, techniqueand ensemble skills. It helps them to overcome anyinhibitions about playing alone, which can only have apositive benefit for any student.These solos are different in that they have beencomposed or arranged with the ability level of thestudent in mind. We have called on our experience asmusic educators, composers, conductors and editorsto put together a collection of solos that will be usefulxa0to the student for multiple years. We feel stronglythat these solos are both musically fresh and moreindicative of the types of contemporary music that thestudents will encounter as they develop into their lateryears in instrumental music. It is our mission to help toimprove the overall musicianship of students. We tookgreat care in making sure that there is always a musicalsophistication in all of these pieces, even though thetechnical demands are somewhat limited. Playing withgood phrasing is essential at every level, and it is achallenge that we hope all young musicians will striveto achieve. We are confident that this collection of soloswill lead you in the right direction.It was a pleasure for us to have the opportunity to puttogether this collection. We know it will be a useful toolfor you for years to come. Carl Fischer presents a collection of solo pieces with piano accompaniments for use at festival adjudicated events or in recitals. Solos range in difficulty from grade 1 to 2 and are progressively arranged, featuring a wide variety of musical styles from original compositions to beautiful arrangements of folk songs and classical pieces. Each volume includes downloadable full-version recordings for the student to use as an example, as well as piano-only recordings to use in practice. The download also contains piano accompaniments as printable PDF files.