New Piano Music: 21st Century Americana

by Elisabeth Lomax

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Mel Bay recently released 21st Century Americana, a collection of intermediate piano solos with MIDI-generated accompaniments on CD. The works in this collection are built around enduring folk songs collected by John and Alan Lomax. The pieces are arranged in a variety of styles, including a soft rock ballad, a fandango, a lullaby, new age, blues, and more. Complete lyrics, melodies in lead sheet format, historical notes, and suggestions for related study topics are all included, making this book interesting to historians as well as pianists. Designed for a number of possible performance situations, each solo may be performed independently, with the enclosed CD, or with the included part for a second piano. The companion CD features lively, MIDI-generated accompaniments for the pieces both with the piano included and without. The CD will play in any standard CD player.

Along with this article you can download a sample piece from the book, John Riley. It starts with the melody line, first verse lyrics, and chord symbols. Then we have the remaining lyrics, and lyrics for Willie and Mary, a variant of the tune. This is followed by the piano solo arrangement. Other tunes in the book are presented in a similar fashion, with the order varied to facilitate page turns in the solos. Some of the tunes include practice suggestions, a detailed history, study questions, or research topics. If you or your students are interested in the history of genuine American music, this is a great book to spark discussion.

Elisabeth L. Lomax, who collected and arranged this pieces, teaches privately and is an active church musician in the Kansas City, Missouri, area. The works in this collection utilize folk songs collected by two members of her family, John and Alan Lomax. Elisabeth wants to encourage young musicians to explore the rich resource of stories and melodies contained in our country's folk music.

Audio track 1 - Piano Solo (MP3 format)
Audio track 2 - Accompaniment Only (MP3 format)