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Seasonal Suites (for Octave Mandolin)

by John Goodin

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about

Seasonal Suites is my title for this collection of all four of the suites that I have composed especially for the larger members of the mandolin family, the mandocello (CGDA) and octave mandolin (GDAE). The first two suites in this collection, Winter and Spring, appear also as separate entitles here on my Bandcamp site. When I returned to the project and composed and recorded the Summer and Autumn Suites I decided to not add them also as separate albums but to, eventually, combine all four under the title Seasonal Suites. As with the earlier suites, all of this music was composed on the octave mandolin with the mandocello also in mind.

The idea for these suites came to me as I was reading the excellent biography of Lou Harrison recently written by Bill Alves and Brett Campbell. It's a fascinating and inspiring story of a great American composer. Harrison would often write short pieces using the suite format and, while reading the book during breakfast one morning, I had the idea to do something similar aimed at mandocello and octave mandolin players.

After composing the first two suites, and receiving many generous compliments from members of the Mandocello and Mandola communities, I moved on to other projects. Then, at the start of the pandemic, in March 2020, I purchased Christoph Wolff's new book, Bach's Musical Universe.

Just as the biography of Lou Harrison had kick-started my earlier work Wolff's great book gave me the idea for finishing the set. Wolff repeatedly gives examples of Bach reusing his earlier work to create new pieces for different instruments, ensembles or purposes. I decided to do something similar (minus Bach's genius of course) and "borrow" short pieces from my earlier collection "Postcards From the Crater (for solo mandolin)".

So the "new" Summer and Autumn Suites are almost entirely comprised of music that originally appears in the Postcards collection. However, many of these borrowings contain changes, elaborations, new bits and adaptations to better suit the bigger instruments. This was really fun for me and I hope that the results please listeners as well.

The sheet music for all four seasonal suites is freely available on my So Many Tunes blog, under the entry for each suite. I have also collected all four suites together in ebooks (for either Octave Mandolin or Mandocello) that can be purchased through my Mandotopia website.

Finally, it's worth noting that the files you receive if you "purchase" these recordings from this Bandcamp site are derived from the original master wave files, unlike the lossy MP3 files that are posted on my blog.

credits

released June 28, 2021

Recorded at home in Decorah, Iowa using a recently built Eastman MDO305 octave mandolin. Cover photo taken on May Day, 2021 in our front yard.

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about

John Goodin Decorah, Iowa

John Goodin (1951-2021) played guitar and mandolin for decades. He wrote fiddle tunes and pieces for mandolin orchestra, published music books and recorded several CDs. He performed around the country with the contra dance band Contratopia and locally with fiddler Erik Sessions and the Scandinavian-American band Foot-Notes, among others. ... more

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