Maha Chulalongkorn; No Moon; Echo; Lay Kram Goes Dixie; Still on my Mind; Oh I Say; New Year Greeting; Sweet Words; Blue Day; Alexandra; Kwamfan an Sungsud. CD: 38 minutes
Sheet Music: 52 pages
AMI Music: AMI 2007 12/13
Hucky Eichelmann
To have a King be a famous composer, who has had his music played by all manner of musicians, and then find that he played with the like of Stan Getz, Benny Goodman, or Louis Armstrong, is, to be fair, immensely rare and unusual. Can anyone imagine a performance or recording of ‘The Choral Works of His Royal Highness Prince Charles? ‘Well, such is the case with the only recently deceased former King of Thailand, eleven of whose pieces are here arranged for guitar by four different guitarists and performed by Hucky. It is immediately obvious that His Majesty was a jazzer at heart, although he did love Classical almost equally. Apart from two pieces, one in Open D Tuning and the other in open G tuning, the remaining 9 are in normal tuning. Many of the pieces are in swing rhythm, with the usual two straight crotchets in the notation that should be treated as triplets. With No Moon (Arranged by Bernard Sumner) you are instantly in that style, and immediately one realizes that they have been very cleverly arranged for guitar, and you have to be an intermediate to advanced player to get the most out of these. In contrast Echo is freer and not full of swung quavers but the jazz harmonies are still very strong and there are lots of colourful chords that you might otherwise find in Duke Ellington, or George Gershwin, for example. Lay Kram Goes Dixie is another toe – tapper that has a wonderful chorus section. Still On My Mind is marked Freely, No Tempo, and is a ballad piece that has a wonderful tune, and harmonies and is lots of fun to play, with a coda that has some eye, and ear – catching time signature changes and a lot of very fast runs. One of the best is Oh I Say is another finger twister, but immense fun to get under your fingers, but it is actually very fair to say that the arrangements are so good that you would never guess that any on them weren’t written for the guitar.
This is a very interesting and worthwhile collection of pieces on the sheet music, and a very entertaining CD from Hucky of pieces that really are worth hearing and seeing, and trying out for yourselves.
Chris Dumigan
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