Gerard Cousins - Stay By My Side (2024) [Hi-Res]

Tracklist

01. Stay By My Side
02. One Step Away
03. Prayer for Peace
04. Gyan's Song
05. Tomorrow's Song (Arr. for Guitar by Gerard Cousins)
06. Saman (Arr. for Guitar by Gerard Cousins)
07. Haiku 1
08. For Alex
09. Once This Was Now
10. Haiku 4
11. mRNAissance (after Marco dall'Aquila)
12. Six Studies: IV. Night in the Village
13. Haiku 2
14. Für Alina (Arr. for Guitar by Gerard Cousins)
15. Haiku 3
16. Spiegel im Spiegel (Arr. for Guitar by Gerard Cousins)
17. In the Sky and on the Ground (Arr. for Guitar by Gerard Cousins)
18. Spiegel im Spiegel (Reflection Version - Arr. for Guitar by Gerard Cousins)

The underlying themes of this album include peace, stillness and calm. My focus, as always, with my music is to aim to produce something that is beautiful. The pieces are a mix of originals by guitarist-composers and my own improvisations and compositions. There are also some new transcriptions of piano pieces which I have been working on for the past few years.

Other works on the album came to me through serendipitous meetings or the tangled fortunes of internet explorations. The inspiration starts close to my home with the Welsh composer David John Roche, then perhaps unexpectedly, we head not south (toward Spain) but northwards towards places that one does not naturally associate with the guitar. These contemporary composers of Sweden, Iceland and Estonia have provided a rich source of contemplative art.

The transcriptions present musical problems that are often solved by changing the tunings of the guitar strings. And with each new tuning I find novel combinations that inspire me to create new pieces. Many of these are improvised on the spot, or grow spontaneously and are later edited or expanded upon to create more structured pieces.

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