Donationware - How it works

Copyright: we retain the copy right on our arrangements for public performance or any other commercial application but grant you the right to download it free of charge for your own personal use.  Donation: If you enjoy the music I would be grateful if you would make a donation to the charitable Trust Fund run by Croydon Whitgift Rotary Club.

English composers

from Coates to

Walton 

Eric Coates’ Oxford Street March from the orchestral London Again Suite happily arranged on Steel Drums, Harp and Marimba by way of a piano transcription. The style is eerily familiar to those of us who grew up with his In Town Tonight signature tune (from the London Suite) every Saturday evening. Percy Grainger’s Handel in the Strand comes from the same sort of mould as the Oxford Street March. All right he was Australian born but his music is British to the core. This piano transcription is re-arranged on Steel Drums, Gamelan and Marimba to give it that Caribbean touch. Gilbert and Sullivan operas contain many memorable tunes and we have three overtures : The Mikado, The Pirates of Penzance, HMS Pinafore  and two songs: When you are lying awake from Iolanthe Never Mind the Why and Wherefore from HMS Pinafore. They are all arranged on our established pallet of New World Instruments.  Gustav Holst composed the Planet suite during the first world war. We have arranged four of the movements: Jupiter Mars Mercury  Neptune  on Steel Drums, Marimba for the strings, Vibraphone for Brass and Ocarina for woodwind augmented by Harps, with the addition of a Gamelan on the Horn parts for Mars, Mercury, and Neptune. There are also additional sustaining synthesisers in the Neptune arrangement. William Walton’s  Crown Imperial was composed in the 1930’s as the British Empire began to implode. It is full of glorious optimism and self confidence which now appears totally misplaced. Such are the wonders of hindsight.  Our percussion arrangement simply emphasises the positive attitude projected by this piece.