At CoMA we have a wide range of repertoire for you to choose from. Our Music Sales and Catalogue Manager, Emory Southwick, has curated a selection of pieces perfect for youth ensembles, classroom settings, and school-aged students.
Score and recording available here
This piece is written for four-part Open Score plus piano and a clapping part. This fast-paced work is a joy to perform, with lots of percussive playing, vocal sounds, and fun choreography. It works really well for older children and begins to introduce extended techniques alongside fun melodies and rhythms.
Score and recording available here
This piece is a graphic score/game designed for classroom settings written for any instrument. The different levels of the game are designed to gradually introduce key musical concepts in a fun and engaging way: a teacher might produce lesson plans over multiple weeks for students to learn about each aspect and to confidently play the game. The game should be approached in a fun, easygoing, and unpressured manner.
Score and recording available here
This piece is a graphic score for any number of voices inspired by Shapenote singing, which became popular in the American South. The piece uses shapes instead of standard Western notation, where each note is a different pitch. The performers can choose the pitches individually or there can be a collective choice on pitch. It’s an excellent piece for students as there’s so much to interpret here, you don’t need to be an experienced singer to perform it, and you can try performing each page in a myriad of ways.
Score and recording available here
This piece is part graphic score, part notation written for three-part Open Score plus piano, percussion and drum kit. Each part has an easy version available. The piece features drawings of wildlife found at the beach, with performers bringing these creatures to life using their instruments. It’s a piece with a lot of joy and fun, and works particularly well for 14-18 year-olds, but is just as rewarding for everyone else.
This piece is a graphic score designed for any combination of instruments, aimed at young musicians aged 8-11. It is a resource for fostering imagination in a musical workshop or classroom setting and the composer’s hope is that young people will enjoy using this score to explore their creativity and develop their musical skills.
Score and recording available here
This piece is for four-part Open Score plus piano, drum kit, glockenspiel, and drinking glasses, which uses gentle lilting melodies and triumphant themes to create a very driven piece. It’s a piece which feels like a track from a video game soundtrack, with lots of modal melody and harmony. The piece finishes with the performers having the choice to bring back melodies from earlier in the piece.
Score and recording available here
This piece is written in four one-page movements written for wind, brass, strings, and percussion, in three or four parts. The pieces focus on players making percussive sounds with their instruments, juxtaposed with some solos and more melodic parts. It’s a great piece for getting people interested in exploring the sounds they can make with their instruments.
Score and recording available here
This is written for two woodwind groups, high and low strings, piano, percussion, and a carnival group of people making noises. Based on ideas Robert found in Bolivian musical aesthetics when travelling to the country, the emphasis is on creating various forms of cacophony: shouts, screams, bangs, mixed together with some typical Carnivalesque tunes for an altogether very wild affair. It’s a very fun piece with lots of ways for students to learn about different time signatures, fun rhythms, and working with text instructions.
Score and recording available here
This graphic score is for four-part flexible ensemble and focuses on creating soundscapes based on colourful visuals. It gives performers a lot of agency and choice about the sounds they create and it is accessible for all abilities.
Score and recording available here
This is a piece for four-part Open Score to be played with a recording of the ringing bells from the Maria Unter dem Kreuz Kirche in Berlin. The piece focuses on bell-like sonorities and how the ensemble interacts with the recording. The piece is an exercise in listening to each other and the recording, learning more about your instrument as you do so.
Questions? Looking for specific instrumentation?
Get in touch with our Music Sales and Catalogue Manager, Emory Southwick, at emory@coma.org
