Monthly Archives: May 2026

Ashokan Farewell: A nostalgic tune everyone loves

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Jay Ungar, and his wife Molly Mason have been running fiddle camps for a long time. Back in the early 80s, after a Summer fiddle camp had wrapped up, Jay Ungar was reminiscing about the fun that was had, and also lamenting the fact that it was over until the following year. He took out his fiddle, and a tune came into his head. The tune really affected him deeply, and brought tears to his eyes every time he played it. Molly, Jay’s wife suggested that he call the tune Ashokan Farewell. The family band recorded the tune on one of their albums, and Jay thought nothing of it. Documentary director Ken Burns somehow came in possession of a copy of the album with Ashokan Farewell on it and decided to use it in his upcoming documentary on the Civil War in the United States. The tune was featured 27 times during the documentary, and in one of the most poignant moments where a soldier’s letter to his sweetheart saying that he might not come home is narrated, Ashokan Farewell is featured as the soundtrack. Many people believed that the tune was an older tune from around the Civil War years, and someone even tried to sue Jay Ungar claiming that he plagiarized the tune from somewhere else. For a while Jay Ungar doubted that Ashokan Farewell was his original melody. It is an original tune by Jay Ungar.

Here is my recording on violin and piano of Jay Ungar’s Ashokan Farewell. He refers to this tune as a Scottish Lament by a Jewish guy from the Bronx in New York. Enjoy.

The Use of Technology to Store and Read Sheet Music

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For a long time, instrumentalists and singers had to carry around binders full of sheet music and flip pages back and forth, or in the case of pianists, get someone else to turn pages for them (sometimes with mixed results). Now sheet music can be downloaded onto an iPad or Android tablet in pdf format and put into a sheet music app and read that way. You can also take pictures of the sheet music and save the file as a pdf in the sheet music app. To prevent page turning disasters, page can be duplicated in the sheet music app and moved to the correct place so that the musician doesn’t have to flip back several pages to repeat a whole section of music. Pages can be turned by swiping the tablet or iPad with your finger, or turned hands free by using a Bluetooth page turning foot pedal. Notes or comments can be written on the music in the app, or problem spots in the music can be circled.

More and more musicians and singers are going paper free and using iPads and tablets because it is way more convenient than carrying around a textbook-sized binder every time you go to rehearsal or perform in front of an audience. The tablet or iPad is very light to carry around, doesn’t take up a lot of space in a backpack or bag, and only needs to be checked to ensure that the battery is charged. In a rehearsal space or concert space, the lighting may not be very good. The iPad or tablet can be adjusted to make the sheet music brighter or dimmer on the screen. With paper, if the music is hard to see, you can’t do anything to make it more visible (except stand or sit under brighter lights). The foot pedal simply has to have its batteries checked and replaced once in a while.

A lively Latin tune called “For Sephora”

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In 2013, while I was working in the Victoria Conservatory of Music library, I found out that one of the jazz students Jay Jennings was interested in starting a band. Jay was studying saxophone in the post-secondary music program at the Conservatory but also played acoustic and electric guitar. We met and started rehearsing once a week at Jay’s house. That Summer, we did some busking at one of the local outdoor markets playing Django Reinhardt tunes, a few jazz standards, and a Latin tune by Stochelo Rosenberg of the Rosenberg Trio called “For Sephora” which he wrote for his little sister Sephora. For Sephora proved to be our greatest hit, and whenever we played it, people of all ages would stop and listen and give us some money. In 2014, Jay decided to enlarge the group, so we became a quartet called Swingsation featuring singer Lauren Marshall (whom Jay knew from the Conservatory), Aron Bird on the acoustic bass, Jay Jennings on rhythm guitar, and me, Robert Jan Dukarm on violin. We still played some of our old instrumental tunes from time to time, but as a quartet we mainly focused on Ella Fitzgerald tunes and Billie Holliday tunes, and a couple of Latin tunes by Antonio Carlos Jobim. We did a few gigs while together as a group, and recorded our one and only album called “Hot Off the Strings” in 2016. In 2018 Swingsation split up because we were not doing regular gigs, and were basically practicing in a band member’s basement every week. Here is a recording of “For Sephora” from Swingsation’s album “Hot Off the Strings” featuring Aron Bird on bass, Jay Jennings on rhythm guitar, and me, Robert Jan Dukarm playing the melody and improvised solo. Enjoy.

Florence Price: Cantilena

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Florence Price (1887-1953)

Florence Beatrice Price was an American organist, pianist, composer, and music teacher. Florence was a very gifted composer who often used adventurous harmonies in her music. Her music is a mix of European Romantic music and the Black spiritual.
During her lifetime, Florence Price received recognition for some of her music, winning a prize for a synphony she wrote and having it performed in public, and winning a prize for a piano sonata that she wrote. Several of her other compositions were also performed publically in concerts and recitals. Most of Florence Price’s music was not published during her lifetime. In 2009, a huge collection of unpublished manuscripts were found in an abandoned house where Florence Price used to live. The house was going to be demolished. The music was saved, and in the last few years, many of those compositions have been published, performed, and are being recorded.

Here is a short lyrical organ piece by Florence Price called Cantilena. I recorded this on my organ at home in my apartment (which is my recording studio). My home organ is run using a computer, and has the sounds of two beautiful church pipe organs that I play using special software. The sound is incredibly realistic, and it sounds like I am in the physical church playing the organ. Enjoy.

How Composers/Arrangers write music

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In earlier times, composers/arrangers had to write down music notation on a piece of paper with a quill pen (which was very messy because ink would spill and smudge all over the paper). Mistakes often had to be scratched out. The only way to make a copy of the music was to write it out by hand. Sometimes the copyist was not very accurate, and there are examples of the same piece of music copied out with different harmonies or notes in a melody. Now composers/arrangers can use music notation software to write a piece of music. They can enter in the notes one by one, or connect their midi keyboard to their computer and enter in the notes by playing them. Once complete, the music can be saved as a pdf file and published for sale online.

An audition today? What audition?

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I am lying in bed, doped up on pain killers with a mouth full of cotton and four wisdom teeth taken out. My dad has just called the Head of Strings, Dr. Walter Mony at the Victoria Conservatory of Music to sign me up for a Music History course. The phone call doesn’t stop there. Dr. Mony then asks my dad what instrument I play, what level I am at, and why I want to take that particular course. After those questions are answered, he says to my dad, “I want your son to come down here right now for an audition.” My dad comes into my bedroom and says, “you need to get out of bed right now. You have an audition to go to.” I was not pleased at all. I had to get out of bed with no preparation at all, and do an audition with the Head of Strings, Dr. Walter Mony! I played Massenet’s Meditation from Thaïs from memory and a few scales (including a very difficult scale that I was not familiar with that I made up fingering for). The whole time I was playing at the audition, Dr. Mony was sitting there with his eyes closed. My immediate thought was that he didn’t like what he was hearing. Once the audition was over Dr. Mony said, “I want that boy.” He took me to see the registrar and registered me for the post-secondary Music Diploma Program. I became Dr. Mony’s student. At that time my strongest instrument was the piano. After I studied violin for a while with Dr. Mony I got discouraged and said to him that maybe I should switch to the piano. He looked at me gruffly and said, “don’t worry. I’ll make a violinist out of you if it kills you!” To make a long story short, I survived and graduated from the Conservatory in both violin and piano and went on to the University of Victoria in the third year of the music program there.

Gerald Moore plays Schubert’s “An die Musik”

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Gerald Moore (1899-1987)

Gerald Moore was an English pianist. He played for many of the great singers and musicians of the 20th Century. During Moore’s lifetime, pianists who accompanied singers and instrumentalists were often treated as second-rate musicians. Accompanists were not paid much, and their names were often featured in small lettering on concert posters. Gerald did his utmost to turn the situation around by lecturing about the art of piano accompaniment, writing books for singers and accompanists to help them better understand and interpret art songs and other repertoire, and by performing and recording with many of his esteemed colleagues. He also wrote a very witty autobiography called “Am I Too Loud?” in which he mentioned many funny anecdotes and talked about several of the singers he worked with and befriended.

One of Gerald Moore’s favourite songs (which he recorded and performed many times with singers) was Franz Schubert’s “An die Musik” which translates to “To the Music.” He arranged the song for solo piano, recorded it in 1949, and famously played it at his final performance after the singers he accompanied asked him to play a solo. Here is Gerald Moore playing his piano arrangement in a recording from 1949.