Kachemak Preludes - Mixed Ability / Beginner String Group

The Kachemak Preludes is a collection of five pieces for mixed ability / beginner string group. The instrumentation is flexible, and includes parts for violins, violas, cellos and double basses. Each instrument can either play an easy part, or a very basic part that just uses open strings.

There is also an "advanced violin" part, which can be played by a teacher (or anyone else who is a more advanced player). This part adds harmonic and melodic complexity, so the players who are playing the easier parts can hear that even though they might just be playing a very basic part, they are part of something bigger, and one day they might be able to play that part too... I also wanted to incorporate the idea that musicians of different abilities could play together, with the more advanced players inspiring the beginners, instead of everyone being segregated by ability as they so often are in Western musical teaching.

This idea was continued in the companion collection to these beginner pieces, the Kachemak Quartets, which use the same melodic material as the Preludes, but develop it further. You can read more about the Quartets and buy the sheet music here.

The pieces are named after aspects of the local environment in Homer, Alaska. (Except for "Peanut Dance", which was a reference to the youngest members of the string group who commissioned it - regrettably I don't remember the details! It may have been their nickname.)

The download includes PDF sheet music.