Carl Fischer has been taking some of their old classics and releasing modern editions with full scores, corrected music, and better engraving. If you have one of these in your library and intend on pulling it out again in the future, you may want to consider getting one of these revised editions and save yourself some time on the podium correcting errors.

Sean Murphy's company has really taken off in the last year. One of the difficult aspects of being an independent composer is being able to find a way to publish your music and make it available to bands. Most regular wind band publishers are targeting a specific educational market and either have their own cadre of house composers, or aren't interested in the type of compositions these individual composers create for colleges and advanced bands.

In the past, many composers had no real choice but to take on all the responsibility themselves, and keeping track of all the business minutia involved is not always the best use of a composer's time. Sean Murphy has been able to put together a business model that takes on works that would be difficult to publish traditional, and produces good quality printings of works, a means to handle all the sales and transactions with a fair payment to the composer, and makes all the works accessible to both directors and music retailers. He's taken on so many new composers and works that I haven't been able to keep up with them all. Instead, I'm going to provide a list of some of the works available for sale that are being performed at some of the CBDNA conferences right now.

All of these works listed are available for sale and can be found on our website now. Click the link below to download a pdf listing of works with prices and audio/score links where available. This is FAR from a complete list of recent publications from them, so check back with me for more information about other Murphy Music Press Works.

Murphy Music Press Works

I really wanted to be able to give all the information I have on the situation in this newsletter, but one detail hasn't been solidified on paper so I can only give partial information. Some of the details are finished though, so I'll tell you what I'm able to.

The LudwigMasters and Kalmus catalog has been purchased by Lauren Keiser Music. This is the same company that picked up the Southern Music catalog when they went out of business many years ago. All of the titles from LudwigMasgters and Kalmus that have not been available for the last several months will be available again. The distribution details have not been signed yet so I can't go into that. I do have some information that could be important for your upcoming concert planning though.

Lauren Keiser has informed me that while they plan to make all the LudwigMasters titles available again, it's going to be a long process. There's a lot of pieces in the catalog that need to be reprinted. They are giving top priority to certain high selling titles, including Lincolnshire Posy. I also talked with them about other standard works used in conducting symposiums, and they will be moving those pieces up the reprint chain. Keep in mind though that a great many pieces will take a long time to get to the reprint queue. It could take several months for an order to come in as Lauren Keiser will have to balance their ongoing reprint run with all the one-off print runs they will need to do in order to try an accommodate all the upcoming requests for schools. I expect it will take a year or two before enough of the catalog has been reprinted to allow for a smooth ordering and delivery process. Please keep this in mind when programming and ordering your music.

One more thing. Lincolnshire Posy is one of the first things being reprinted. As part of this process, they want to try and fix any errors that exist in the 2010 "blue cover" edition that currently exists. I have collected a number of these corrections, but if you know of a specific error that needs to be addressed, please email me right away. They want to start the re-engraving and reprinting process within a week or so, so I have limited time to get this together for them. They have the original computer files, so there should be no new errors in the next printing, just corrections. The new version may be ready in as soon as 2 months or so.

Your copy should address 3 key questions: Who am I writing for? (Audience) Why should they care? (Benefit) What do I want them to do here? (Call-to-Action)

Create a great offer by adding words like "free" "personalized" "complimentary" or "customized." A sense of urgency often helps readers take an action, so think about inserting phrases like "for a limited time only" or "only 7 remaining!"

Mark Conner hosts a weekly podcast called Everything Band where he interviews notable composers, conductors, and other figures of the wind band world. You can download them on your favorite podcast app or go to his website.

 

Andrew Pease continues his academic work with the Wind Band Literature blog . He reviews performances of wind band concerts he attends, comments on works he conducts with his band at Hartwick College in New York and other groups, and writes about other topics concerning the wind band repertoire.

The Saint Louis Wind Symphony (SLWS) is a non-profit, all volunteer concert band dedicated to the highest-quality performance of the best wind literature. In addition to regular concert season, they now produce the Saint Louis Wind Symphony Podcast , highlighting works from upcoming concerts and interviews with musicians and guest artists.

One More Time is a bi-monthly podcast hosted by Illinois Bands. Each episode we will present a story on a topic that we hope appeals to anyone interested in wind band, both concert and marching. We will also include segments such as "Two Minute Rehearsal Techniques" for band directors and "History from the Archive" with Scott Schwartz, Director of the Sousa Archive and Center for American Music.

If you have a conducting symposium coming up, touch base with me about getting a page set up for it on our website. That will also let me know what scores I need to get in stock so participants can get them from me right away. Hope the rest of your school year goes well and I'll see about touching base this summer.