Performance Projects
Low Tech Recordings of my
Arrangements on Green Staff Paper.

Contents, CD - 1, completed 2006 December 12, (c) 2006, Courtney B. Duncan

Group 1, The Good
1. How Firm a Foundation
2. Come Ye Sinner
3. Lead On O King Eternal
4. What Wondrous Love
5. Beyond Saturday Night
6. A Charge to Keep

Group 2, The OK
7. Standing on the Promises
8. Sing Praise to God
9. A Savior From On High
10. Challenger Seven
11. Procession of Nobles

Group 3, The Best
12. We Are One
13. Take Time to be Holy
14. George Gershwin Prelude I, Allegro Ben Ritmato E Deciso
15. George Gershwin Prelude II, Andante Con Moto E Poco Rubato
16. George Gershwin Prelude III, Allegro Ben Ritmato E Deciso

Here is the one original piece from that collection, the Challenger Seven (mp3).  (c) 1986, 2006, Courtney B. Duncan
(And here is Challenger Seven as an m4a.)

(If you can't play one of these, e-mail me.)

Notes on Challenger Seven, edited from my CD writeup:

In 1985-6 I had been arranging hymn tunes into instrumentals for church offertories on a weekly basis, working usually on Wednesday.  During this period the Challenger Space Shuttle was lost shortly after launch (January 28, 1986).  The following Wednesday I was unable to think of much else and, like many others in the nation that month, was hurting.  When I sat at the piano that day, I did not arrange a hymn tune but wrote in just a few hours an original piece, Challenger Seven.  The mood of the piece is not wrenching or painful but serene and light.  The image is of a flowery meadow on a bright day with puffy clouds, perhaps a time and place for a picnic.  But, as the piece goes on it becomes reflective then runs into a sudden dead end, as did the flight of the Challenger.  At the conclusion, the theme is restated.  Life goes on after tragedy, though it is then different and usually more somber.

Only after Challenger Seven was complete and had been performed several times did someone point out to me that the opening statement consisted of seven ascending notes.  The figure was intentional, but the number seven was not conscious.

The file recorded above was the only one in the 2006 CD Project that took only one take.  For more on this, e-mail me.

There was a CD - 2, personal archival only.  Recording quality that only I could listen to.

The entire program notes for both CDs is here.

Prokofiev Piano Sonata #3
Rachmaninoff Prelude, G minor
Chopin Etude C# minor, Op. 25 No. 7, and others (i.e., Op. 10 No. 5, 6)

Next real project is to work through The Contemporary Keyboardist by John Novello.  Tim Allen (at church) gave me this book in April (09) and I'm saving up music time to work through it.

Also see Pasadena Covenant Church under Faith.

(c) Courtney Duncan 2007, 2009