“Catalogue d’Ouiseaux” (Catalog of Birds) has been a favorite of mine since the 1970’s.

It was the inspiration for my collection of “Insect and Western” pieces: I was receptive to Olivier Messiaen’s profound faith in a composer exalting the glories of nature. With all touring off from 2020 into 2021 and the time-consuming task of organizing such ventures also absent, it was time to sink my teeth into something other than ducks and chickens. Beginning on the Volume entitled La Bouscarle was a mistake, it is not the first book in his Catalogue, but I had made a promising start so decided to go on building the nest, finding ways of creating distinctly banjo music out of his piano scores.

I am using an arsenal of banjos mostly made by Deering: the basic 5-string, 5-string with expanded hoop, fretless 5-string and the 12 string banjo, plus another 5-string made by Regal. I have created tunings based on the scores and also use all the standard banjo tunings, detailing fingerings and looking for ways of covering all the keyboard notes with the maximum of five pitches available at any one time on these banjos. La Bouscarle is one of the longer works in th catalog: this is part one. It was recorded through 2021 in my home studio and the surrounding outdoors, in the latter case allowing various North Carolina birds to have their say.