Tonight a certain piece has been playing on my mind. Although secrecy and the ensuing sense of security are surely a part of the warm feeling it brings, I would like to share.
What is it? It's a musical representation of a trip down the Nile river in Egypt, entitled River of the Ancients. It's written by a chap named Michael Sweeney, who has probably written more charts for high school bands than he has had hot meals.
Where is it? I heard it first when my high school concert band played it (all fucking year) 2006, but an in-tune and in-time version can be found on The Music of Michael Sweeney, Vol. 2, which I ended up buying last week just to hear the thing proper.
What's so good about it? You'd be hard-pressed to find a veteran of high school orchestra ensembles who actively enjoys the music they were forced to play, but I'm sorry to say I'm one of them. If you either accept or ignore the admittedly lame historic basis for the tune, it winds up sounding like something Grieg might have done - moody, unpredictable and manically symphonic. Maybe I just get off on really tightly composed pieces of music, which this surely is, but I like to think that it's more to do with the piece itself. Harmonically pleasing, heralding, rewarding. Conceivably lame, yes, but not one bit disingenuous. It's just music that sounds good to my ears.
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