Rose Of The Rio Grande - Jazz Big Band Arrangement

Rose of the Rio Grande was probably written in 1948, but could have been written a little later. Frankly, it is an amazing score, certainly one of the greatest arrangements Mulligan ever wrote, but also reflective of his maturity as a writer. The introduction alone sounds like it was written twenty years later; it is so unique for its time that the rest of the arrangement almost sounds like an anti-climax, except that Mulligan also wrote one of the great out-choruses in big band history for this setting. He knew how good it was, since he reused it for his own composition Swing House written for Stan Kenton in 1952. This arrangement would not be recorded by Thornhill until 1953 for Albert Marx's Trend label. Alto sax 1 doubles on clarinet. The brass instrumentation is: 3 trumpets, 2 horns in F, 2 trombones, and tuba. We have included optional alternate parts for the horns in F and tuba (see below). Ranges: Trumpet 1: to A6; Trombone 1: to Ab4. Swing, medium difficult.