Latin, Klezmer and Eastern European sheet music site

[Martin Jonas]

I've recently come across a small-but-nice collection of sheet music, mainly lead sheets (melody and chords), at this site:

http://www.espressomap.com/songs/

While the page is headed "accordion songs", most of the sheet music is not instrument specific and indeed a fair few are copies of old mandolin arrangements with chord symbols written over.

They are grouped in three categories: Eastern European/Balkan, Klezmer and Latin. Obviously, there is quite a bit of overlap between the first two categories.

The Latin pieces are scans from the repertoire of a Portland OR group, Tango Tonic, and most of these are lead sheets from the old 1920s/1930s Pagani/Di Bella arrangements for two mandolins and guitar, several of them arranged by the splendidly-named Don Flamingo. This is in much the same Latin/Italian fusion style as the Tony Flores/Matteo Casserino repertoire collected in Sheri Mignano's book and played by the Hot Frittatas, but there is little overlap in the actual pieces. As I play a lot of the pieces from Sheri's book, this is a most welcome addition.

I've tried my hand on a nice little tango called "My Love", written by Joseph Gioe (PDF). The lead sheet is headed "1st Mandolin" and as I can't find any other reference online to this piece or to the composer I presume that it is an original mandolin piece. Falls really nicely under the fingers on the mandolin. I've recorded a quick run-through on my Mid-Mo mandolin with tenor guitar backing:



Martin

[DougC]

The klezmer tunes are from the Kamman Book. All classic tunes. In fact because many tunes don't have a name, (they are called Frelikhs #1 or Bulgar #39 for example), players just call out a number to their band mates and everyone knows the tune.
Highly recommended for thoes who read regular staff notation. (My Yofus is also called Dance, Dance Yiddeleh. I posted this tune in TAB earlier).

And nice playing Martin. I'm in the mood for a tango now!

[Martin Jonas]

I have just revisited the tango "My Love" by Joseph Gioè (1890-1957), which I recorded back in 2014 from a lead sheet found at the espressomap.com site, as per my original post above. The site is now defunct, but still archived through the Wayback Machine:

https://web.archive.org/web/20101206...map.com/songs/

The lead sheet for My Love is at:

https://web.archive.org/web/20090617.../My%20Love.pdf

My original recording was just on mandolin and tenor guitar, from the leadsheet (see above). Since then, Sheri Mignano has posted the original second mandolin and guitar parts in her Dropbox thread, so this new take has the complete arrangement. I've also added a mandocello bass line, extracted from the guitar part, making it a mandolin quartet.

1890s Giuseppe Vinaccia bowlback mandolin
Mid-Missouri M-0W mandolin
Vintage Viaten tenor guitar
Suzuki MC-815 mandocello



Martin

[Joel Glassman]

espressomap.com
This site appears to be defunct.