God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen

This rousing Samba is guaranteed to wake up any audience or congregation. With the familiar melody bouncing from winds to brass to strings & horns, all over a Latin rhythm bed, there is no opportunity for the listener’s attention to drift away for even a moment. And – your orchestra will have a ball playing this chart!

WHAT’S NEW?
Those familiar with the original release from Word Music may notice some changes & improvements:
• Score and parts are set in a classic Jazz font, with a cleaner & leaner layout on the page.
• The suggested tempo has been slowed by 8 bpm – to 104. (In hindsight, the original tempo sounded a wee bit frantic.)
• Removed (and wrote out) the D. S. al Coda to make the chart easier to rehearse and read.
• An optional Flute 2 and Clarinet 2 have been added to the score. The original arrangement worked well enough without them, but if you have these players available the result will be very nice, I think.
• There were some seemingly small, but quite significant errors in the chord nomenclature of the original rhythm charts & score. Those have been corrected!
• I’ve cued in some optional “escape” notes for Trumpet 1 – for those early morning performances when he (or she) doesn’t necessarily have all those high notes handy.
• I re-voiced a handful of chords in the brass section. Nothing earth-shattering.
• Violin 1 & 2 have been split into separate parts. (In the original, they were in one part.) Violin 2 is now more supportive (and easier to play) in a handful of the higher lines.
• Percussion parts are more clearly defined for the players. These changes didn’t aiect the sound of the chart so much that it required a new demo – only a slightly slower demo. Thanks to technology, the original demo could be slowed a bit without changing the pitch or sound of the recording!