A personal message from composer Barry Cockcroft

"When I was student in high school it was playing duets that allowed me to quickly develop a mature tone and to learn accurate rhythm. I studied with fantastic saxophonist Barry Currie. Nearly every lesson we would play some form of duet, jazz or classical. I always loved hearing him play and I think that rather than him try to explain a lot of musical concepts to me all the time, he could just demonstrate through his own saxophone.

Why traditional tunes? I still believe that the fastest way for a student to learn music is aurally. If they know the tune they can immediately start to play the music without having to worry about reading, phrasing and articulation. It just happens naturally. This is not to say that students playing familar music will not learn to read. In fact, I believe that this will happen even faster as they will be able to associate quickly well-known music with its printed representation.

I hope that you enjoy these duets and I will continue to encourage teachers to play along with their students - and for students to play together. While writing these duets, I worked closely with pianist Graeme Vendy. His unique way of taking a traditional or classical melody and making it sound more contemporary through his own unique chord voicings and stylistic phrasing is amazing. We sat down for 2 days of playing together. Every piece was always different and I'm sure that you will enjoy the spontaneous and contmporary sounding accompaniments."