About the Music

We thank the composer for sharing the following notes about the piece:

Crossover Blues for 4 bass clarinets was composed in 2019 for the Benslow Annual Bass Clarinet Extravaganza in Hertfordshire England, until recently run by the bass clarinettist and Director of Gemini Ian Mitchell. The performers in this group are all advanced amateurs.

Crossover Blues is not a conventional blues but an up tempo piece with bluesy inflections. It is mainly in continuous flowing quavers – a kind of perpetuum mobile interrupted by ‘breaks’ and a contrasting jazzy syncopated middle section.. The ‘crossover’ in the title refers to the fact that the various musical elements – the melodic themes, the flowing quaver accompanying patterns and so on frequently move over from one instrument to another.

Extended-range instruments NOT required.

Score: 10 pages; parts: 3 pages each.

PDF Edition

Purchasing this item will give you access to download the music as a PDF. If you would prefer to purchase a hard copy, please click here.

About the Composer

Hugh Shrapnel was born in 1947 in Birmingham, England. He took up the oboe aged 13 and started composing at 16. He had private composition lessons with Elizabeth Lutyens, and studied composition with Norman Demuth and Cornelius Cardew at the Royal Academy of Music in London. Later on he gained a B.mus degree at Goldsmiths College London.

Hugh’s music has been widely performed in Britain as well as the US and Europe. In recent years Hugh has had many pieces performed by the London New Wind Music Festival and the Cornelius Cardew Concerts Trust. His 7 Dances for Bob for clarinet and bass clarinet have recently been performed by Ian Mitchell and Catriona Scott.

His music is characterised by its lyricism, sense of atmosphere and place, an element of humour, love of nature, use of unusual instrumental combinations and enthusiasm for experimentation. Musical influences are many and varied including English and American experimental music, Satie, Ives, Stravinsky, Scarlatti, Elizabethan music; also various kinds of jazz and popular music, Edwardian music-hall, folk music from around the world and the sound of bells.

Hugh has always been an enthusiastic and experienced pianist and was formerly an oboist as well as playing other less conventional instruments such as the toy piano and Irish tin whistle. Over the years he has composed for and performed in many new music ensembles including the Scratch Orchestra, Promenade Theatre Orchestra, the Shrapnel Wood and Metal Band and Vermilion. For many years Hugh taught music in inner city London Schools and ran evening classes in composition and song writing at London colleges.

Hugh is a member of the Performing Rights Society and the British Academy of Composers and Songwriters.