Tobias spent 4 years in Greece and when he picks up the guitar you can hear that he loved the Athens Rebetika scene. He tells me that harmonies and counterpoint are not part of the genre. I still had a go. Tobias actually wrote lyrics for this (in Greek); we may record the full version soon…

A song composed on a grand piano my wife Jackie gave me for my birthday. We wrote lyrics for it but here is just the instrumental version.

My son Niklas plays a lot of these energetic melodies on the piano. I asked him to finalise one of them, so I could add some bass and guitar.

Not lamenting the death of a real person; Tim needed something for a film wherein the cast launched into a humming chorus after a character was shot; I sent him a rough draft, but Tim developed something better, so I could reclaim (and play with) my tune.

My son Tim asked me to write a violin accompaniment to one of his songs. So I produced this accompaniment (saluting JS Bach) to the chorus of the video song “Don’t you know?” (for the full version: google TimH Don’t You Know). There are 3 references to Bach, which I combined in one canon:
1 The art of fugue: opening theme
2 Mattheus passion: Kommt, Ihr Töchter
3 Brandenburg 3: first movement

A rather typical after work tune (the same chord sequence repeated 9 times!), but the instrumentation reflects the successive moods:
Knackered in the sofa (dragging string quartet)
A glimpse of recovery (add piano)
Regaining energy (flute)
Seeing the funny side of it (baritone)
Remembering the drag ….. (violin)
Calming down ….
Reaching relaxation (guitars)
Not forgetting the drag …. (Violin)
Ultimate piece and joy

Alex and I were colleagues in Luxembourg, and later in London where we shared a flat for a while, so we played and wrote a fair number of songs and instrumental pieces before and after work. We should record them all, but that’s for another day. Here’s one that refuses to leave my head.

This is a variation of a song Dirk and I wrote for a musical which never saw the light of day. The song “On voudrait vivre sans problèmes”, was in French chanson style, sung in close harmony, and for our musical we had several variations. This one in five fourths stuck in my mind, though I tried a new arrangement …

An extremely old one! One of the first tunes I developed on a piano. In 2018, I developed it with the help of Paul Mann for string orchestra (recording by the Ukraine Festival Orchestra available at Toccata Classics “Music for My Love” volume 2). Here is a short piano version from which it all started.

Another tune derived from an earlier song I wrote. The army of flutes played by Nadia and the guitar played by Andrey give it an unusual texture. The string quartet only comes in at the end, and I wanted it to sound as if they picked up a variation from the cellar.