Performances

Premiere: Don Better, Drinko Hall, Cleveland State University, Cleveland, Ohio,  September 25, 2005

Don Better, Mixon Hall, Cleveland Institute of Music, Cleveland, Ohio, April 6, 2008

Don Better (electric guitar), Drinko Hall, Cleveland State University, Cleveland, Ohio, October 3, 2010

George Bachmann (electric guitar), collaborative concert of The Cleveland Classical Guitar Society and Cleveland Composers Guild, West Park United Church of Christ, Cleveland, Ohio, February 19, 2012

Don Better, Harkness Chapel, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio, April 29, 2012

Program Note

This work was commissioned in 2004 by guitarist Don Better who is a skilled performer in both  jazz and the classical discipline.

Blue Shuffle consists of nine segments inspired by common phrases or associations with the word “blue,” such as blue moon, patch of blue, out of the blue, black and blue, blue horizon, tangled up in blue, bluebird, little boy blue. The segments were composed so that they can be played in any order, and the idea is that neither the performer nor the audience knows ahead of time in what order the segments will in fact be performed. This gives rise to a particularly keen sense of “being in the moment” as the performance unfolds.

This work can be (and has been) performed on an acoustic or an electric instrument.

One of the movements includes a short section requiring an improvisation over a given bass line.