I call this music funk/romantic. It is a crossbreeding of classical music and popular music. I began as a classical musician, although I played the banjo and the blues, and I started making this music in 1969, after I had been in the rock business and gotten a big dose of liberation from the people I worked with.
I had never been able to please my teachers or my colleagues because there was something funky about the way I wrote, that I couldn't 'clean up'. But I never was able to contemplate a career in rock or pop because I was a Beethoven-freak, and I yearned for long pieces that took you 'on a trip'. What you hear on this site is the result of all this knocking around, and my own assimilation of where I've been. Especially in "Live at the Cell" I made my own kind of cut-down orchestra from Big Band, Muzak, and chamber music, In "Katrina" I go back to a kind of music that some people wrote in the '40's- Earl Robinson and Elie Siegmeister, for example. The music on "In Fashion" is a lot more frankly romantic in sound and feeling, the virtuoso trip of the pianist or the guitarist or the violinist. All this music smells of everywhere I've been and what I've done.
Friends of Michael Sahl
Elena Denisova, a very good Russian piano & violin duo from Vienna.
List of Pieces
- String Quartet 1969
- Piano Sonata 1972
- Symphony 1973 (for big band)
- Conjurer (opera) 1975
- Stauf (opera) 1976
- Civilization and its Discontents (opera) 1977
- Noah (opera) 1978
- Symphony 1978 (for synthesizer, percussion & piano)
- Doina (violin & jazz trio) 1979
- Old Argentinian Tangos [arrangements The Tango Project 1980]
- The Passion of Simple Simon (opera) 1979
- Boxes (opera) 1988
- Cocktail Wanderings (piano solo) 1982
- Symphony 1983 (big band with electric violin)
- In the Woods (violin, piano, clarinet, bass) 1984
- Exiles' Cafe (big band with violin) 1984 (Tango from Exiles' Cafe for piano solo 1984)
- The Milltown Gypsy Ball (violin solo & winds, later strings) 1985
- Storms (sax quartet and string quartet) 1985 +
- Dream Beach (opera) 1987
- Synthetic Dances (for The Tango Project) 1987
- Two Songs 1990
- Blues (piano solo) 1991
- Blood Ferry (voice & piano) 1991
- Junkyard (opera) 1992
- Jungles (elct. vn., elct. guit., piano, bass, drums) 1992 +
- Dancing in the Landscapes (string quartet) 1993
- John Grace Ranter (opera) 1996 text by Margaret Yard
- Serenades (piano solo) 1995 +
- Piano Trio 1997
- Piano Trio 1999 Ghost Highway
- Violin Sonata 1999 +
- Concerto for Electric Violin & Big Band 1999
- A Walk for Two Keyboards 2000
- String Quartet 2000 for Quartet/Ethel
- Ballads & Grooves for the Carinthia String Orchestrra 2000
- Piano Sonata 2001 "Een Vlaamse Sonate" [for Geert Callaert]
- Trio de Cafe 2002 for piano, accordion, percussion [Geert Callaert]
- RIO 2002 musical, text by Nancy Manocherian [Theatre for New City 2002]
- An Anarchist Dream for Two Keyboards 2002
- Sally Anne; Home Sweet Home, opera in 1 act, text by Margaret Yard 2004
- Dinner & Delusion, music-theatre comedy, text by Nancy Manocherian 2004 rewrite 2008
- Lost & Found, Trio for clarinet, baritone sax, and piano 2005
- String Quartet 2006 Cloud City
- Katrina- Voices of the Lost, cantata [text by Margaret Yard] 2007
- Baby Music & Volcano Pie [for band and strings] 2007
- Old Strollers [band w. strings 07]
- In the Dark [band w. strings 07]
- Apatrides [band w. strings 07]
- Gypsy Country vln and piano [publ. hardscore be.] 2008
- Piano Pieces 2008 [Pastoral, Dance,Cave]
- String Quartet 2009