Summer (from The Four Seasons)

If Trans-Siberian Orchestra were to do an arrangement of the "Presto" movement of "Summer" from Vivaldi's The Four Seasons, we think it might sound something like this! John has liked this piece ever since hearing a recording of it years ago featuring the great Itzhak Perlman. If a symphonic metal arrangement is beyond the pale for you, we've included a strings only version on the recording for this issue.

Speaking of which, while we provide a grand staff with a piano/score reduction of the strings, this really isn't meant to be played on piano. The recording will serve you well here, and this is a classic case of "let the studio musicians do the heavy lifting and make the student part playable." If any of your students have never heard The Four Seasons, this might open up a door to broaden their musical palettes.

The key of the piece has been changed from the original G minor to A minor, to make it more accommodating for diatonic Boomwhackers®. This may have presented some challenge for our string players who are accustomed to playing it in G minor, but as we say at Plank Road Publishing, it's for the kids!

To keep the part sane, most Boomwhacker notes will hit only once per measure, with the notable exception of the E Boomwhacker at measure 21, where the performer will play every quarter note for eight bars. This is because: A.) It sounds cool, and B.) It's kind of funny! A Boomwhacker ostinato, if you will. And while we wouldn't normally require students to play quarter notes at this tempo, we thought the single note was doable. To make things a little easier, we are providing a PDF of the extracted Boomwhacker part on our web site.

In performance, it would be fun to have performers dress like symphony players in all black and white. And a conductor with a baton is a must!

Kudos to our drummer Dane Clark, our guitarist Sandy Williams, and our principal violinist Zachary DePue for incredible performances across the board.