The Jay Wilbur Music Room


The piece that starts playing when you open this page is titled Study in the Manner of Sor. It's a classical guitar solo. As its title suggests, the piece has many stylistic elements that are reminiscent of the great Classical period composer for the guitar, Fernando Sor. Overall, however, the composition is modern and might be considered somewhat minimalist. The piece lasts a little over five minutes and consists of two contrasting sections. The first is subtitled Tone Haiku and the second is subtitled Snake Dance.

I wrote Study in the Manner of Sor in 1994. Feel free to download the mp3 file currently playing and/or the sheet music. These downloads are free, but if you decide to perform or record my work, please do so with proper attribution.



My Dance Suite, written in 2009, lasts about 22 minutes and is patterned after the Italian Baroque dance suite. It is written for electric guitar, electric bass guitar, and electric keyboard. At different times, the electric keyboard is asked to synthesize a grand piano, a harpsichord, a celesta, and a reed organ. The first movement of Dance Suite is a Toccata set over a rising chromatic scale. The next four movements, an Allemande, a Sarabande, a Corrente, and a Gavotte, roughly follow the forms of dances that were popular during the Baroque. The final movement is titled Gigue (a Bach). It is a ricercar that reprises material from the first five movements behind a well known theme of Johann Sebastian himself.

Although Dance Suite uses several Baroque ideas, it is unmistakably a modern composition. Here are mp3 files for its six movements:

I. Toccata IV. Corrente
II. Allemande V. Gavotte
III. Sarabande VI. Gigue (a Bach)

If you would like a complete score for this work, please contact me via email. Thanks and enjoy!