Orchestral Works

The Orchestral Works Landis Maitland-Whitelaw: is Landis’ fourth album and contains 9 tracks with just under one hour of aural bliss. These works span from 1999-2022. Is this album the first for a living composer to publish??? If not it certainly is for this composer. 

About the pieces: 

1. A Spanish Evening: 1999  7:45, was originally written as an instrumental for his rock band in 1996.  Later on he wrote it for orchestra featuring the timpani as the feature instrument. This piece is a soundscape with a Spanish flavour. 

2. Birds at the Bath: 2002. 5:03, the inspiration for this piece came when he was sitting on his back porch and watching the birds at the bird bath and observing a cat wanting to become involved…this is a light piece with pensive moments. A sketch of this piece was first written for classical guitar solo (The Sparrow & the Lark). 

The Saskatchewan Suite: is a collection of three pieces written over a period of 7 years for the classical guitar and was put together into a suite of songs to commemorate Saskatchewans centennial and written for orchestra. It was chosen to be performed by the Regina Symphony players from a national call for scores for this occasion in 2005. 

3. North Country: 3:00, was first released on Landis’ Black Tie album 1996. This piece started off as a classical guitar solo, and then written for orchestra in 2005. 

4. Wind In The Field: 3:14, 1996, appears on Landis’ Black Tie album and in 1997 was arranged for the classical guitar and then in 2001 arranged for piano. In 2005 it was written for orchestra. This piece was inspired by driving through southern Saskatchewan and seeing the flax fields blowing in the wind, the blue color made him think of waves on the water. 

5. Ft. Qu’Appelle: 3:07, 2001, written originally for classical guitar and then solo piano and later in 2005 for orchestra. This piece was inspired by the history of the Qu’Appelle valley.

6. On The Guadalquivir: 3:07, 2014,This piece came about when an acquaintance of his approached him with a poem he had written about an area in Spain around the Guadalquivir river. He asked Landis if he would turn it into a song which he did and wrote it for guitar and vocal so that he could sing it. Landis liked the melody he created so much that he wrote it for orchestra in 2014. It is a sonic landscape starting with the slowness of morning, moving through the day to the evening. 

7. Life Just Happens: 7:21, 2020.  Landis wrote this piece as an orchestral piece. It is an organic piece and when finished it brought to mind the complexities of life and how they change over time. 

8. The Sandal March: 5:25, 2021. Landis wrote this piece as a result of a call for scores for a brass band. He then arranged it for orchestra to give it a winder audience. The imagery was that of  a Boy Scout Troop being assembled to go on a hike in the woods. The boys are assembled into a group to start the march. Boys will be boys and their attention is diverted by a hill to run down and other interesting things on the way. The troop has to be gathered together after such mishaps and continue on… ending successfully. 

9.  Urban Sprawl: 10:35, 2022. This is the latest of Landis’ orchestral pieces and was written when he purchased an orchestral sound library of the BBC Orchestra. This had the full orchestral instruments and he was excited to give it a test drive. He wanted to use as many of the instruments as he could in a meaningful way. Working in groups: woodwinds,  strings, brass, percussion (tuned and untuned). This piece has a very contemporary feel. 

This album was written/composed and produced by Landis Maitland-Whitelaw and distributed through DistroKid:  https://distrokid.com.  

Listen on YouTube.