Product Description
Once upon a timeI was a public high school teacher in Southern New Jersey, Medford in the Pine Barrens to be specific. In the early aughts, I would take my select choir, the Shawnee Singers, to the NJ American Choral Directors Association Spring Festival held during that time at Kean University in Union, NJ. Our route to the festival, of course, was up the New Jersey Turnpike with all its characteristic scenery and associations.
I wrote The Turnpike Waits, an alma mater and quirky madrigal inspired a cappella tune, as a choral warmup to be sung before the selections to be adjudicated. My hope was to interject a bit of humor into what was, for many of the singers and perhaps even a few directors, a very serious and tense situation. We did perform it successfully though Im not sure the judges got or appreciated the joke. References include the price of gas, the smells from the oil refineries around Linden and Elizabeth, that infamous North Jersey HBO family but in the end, the true reasons we sallied forth in a yellow school bus on festival day.
Anyway, I offer it here, not so much to sell but to preserve. I dont know if anyone would really buy it but at least this original tune will take its place with many of my arrangements and might prove interesting to someone in the years to come.
If you do wish to perform it, you have my blessing to add your own references.
Jeff Lowden
This product was created by a member of ArrangeMe, Hal Leonard's global self-publishing community of independent composers, arrangers, and songwriters. ArrangeMe allows for the publication of unique arrangements of both popular titles and original compositions from a wide variety of voices and backgrounds.