Evelyn Tiffany Castiglioni

A small collection of 50 tunes, including Airs, Carols, Hornpipes, Jigs, Reels, and Schottisches, arranged for 3 mandolins.

About the piece: "The Jamie Suite" consists of three tunes composed or collected by the Scottish composer James Oswald (1710-1769). It opens with a beautiful air, "There Are Few Good Fellows When Jamie's Awa'," from Oswald's The Curious Collection of Scots Tunes (1740). Jamie of the title may refer to the deposed King James II of England and Ireland (VII of Scotland) or his son James Stuart, who were focal figures in Jacobite uprisings between 1688 and 1746 that attempted to restore the Stuarts to the throne. Robert Burns used the melody 100 years later for an equally beautiful song, "There Will Never Be Peace Till Jamie Comes Hame." The second tune is "Jamie Come Try Me," from Oswald's Caledonian Pocket Companion, which was also used by Burns for a lovely song by the same name. The third tune is a spritely jig, "O'er the Water to Charlie, " from the Caledonian Pocket Companion. The title refers to Bonnie Prince Charlie, grandson of James II, known as the Young Pretender for his aspirations to reclaim the throne for the House of Stuart. The piece was submitted to Women in Music-Columbus Call for Scores and selected from over 100 submissions. It was debuted in the Huntington Recital Hall, Capital University, on May 1, 2016.

Evelyn Tiffany-Castiglioni plays accordion with the Central Texas contra dance band "Jalape o Honey," and arranges and composes the band's repertory of more than 400 tunes. She studied concert accordion and music theory with her father, Robert S. Tiffany, Jr., classical pedal harp with Gayel Panke Gibson and Laurie Buchanan, voice with Lori Joachim Fredrics, cello with Prudence McDaniel of the Marian Anderson String Quartet, and mandolin with Marilynn Mair. She has won many awards for Scottish harp performance. Evelyn received a B. S. degree in Biology from the University of Texas-El Paso and a Ph. D. in Human Genetics and Cell Biology from the University of Texas Medical Branch-Galveston and is a professor of neuroscience at Texas A&M University.

This collection includes all four concert pieces for mandolin ensemble that Evelyn Tiffany-Castiglioni (author of Evelyn's Big Books for Mandolin ensemble) has composed to date. They have been performed by the Marilynn Mair's ensemble Enigmatica, the Austin Mandolin Orchestra, the Tahlequah Mandophonics (Tahlequah, Oklahoma), the New York Mandolin Orchestra, and l'Esperance Mandolin Ensemble (Providence, RI). Instrumentation is mandolin 1, mandolin 2, mandola (scores in 8vb treble clef as well as in alto clef), mandocello, guitar, and bass. Scores are provided in two formats: with mandola in 8vb treble clef and in alto clef.

This book provides a large repertory for the parlor, community hall, or stage for folk ensembles. It contains 144 trio arrangements of traditional and contemporary dance tunes and airs, 6 hymns, and 6 transcriptions of baroque and classical pieces, with melodies, descants, harmonies and chords. The collection includes 8 American Tin Pan Alley standards composed from 1907 to 1919 by Nora Bayes-Northworth, Irving Berlin, Shelton Brooks, Gus Edwards, George W. Meyer, Chris Smith, and Percy Wenrich. It also includes tunes by contemporary composers Davey Arthur, Mer Pantaleoni Boel, Paul Gitlitz, John Goodin, James Hill, Magnus Laesk, Bob McQuillen, and Jim Rebhan. Most scores are printed on one page. The back of the book has 28 pages of notes about the tunes and references to their sources.

This book contains more than 150 reels, jigs, hornpipes, waltzes, airs, and songs arranged for folk ensembles to play for many occasions. I have especially arranged them for mandolins, though they can be played on most other C instruments. I chose the tunes because they are truly satisfying to play, fun to dance to, and represent many styles. There are choices to suit or create any mood. The traditional tunes come from across three centuries and around the world (England, Ireland, Italy, Scotland, Sweden, the United States, and Wales). Timeless favorites are also included by Russian, European and American composers, among them Robert Allen, William Morris, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Ilya Alekseevich Shatrov, and Luke Thomasson. Marches by Leon Jessel, F. W. Meacham and John Phillip Sousa are reincarnated as jigs and reels. Exquisite tunes are also included from contemporary composers Paul Gitlitz, Pete Jung, Maurizio Martinotti, John Turner, and Larry Unger. Some of the tunes are my compositions for my contra dance band "Jalape o Honey" and my mandolin group "Plucked Pairs." Each arrangement consists of the melody line, descant line (harmony generally within or higher than the melody), and harmony line (generally lower than the melody), as well as chords for guitar or accordion. Most scores are printed on one page, though a few run to two pages.