As someone who has never been a fan of most comic strips, I wasn’t sure what I would think of this unique set of books by Andrea and Trevor Dow – The Adventures of Fearless Fortissimo. And, as long as I’m confessing, I’ll admit that I didn’t even care for the books the first time I played through them. But I’m glad I decided to give them another chance. I realized that I just hadn’t put myself enough inside the mind of a 10-year old boy before playing through them!
As is obvious from the book cover and the website verbiage, the whole thrust of this series is toward boys. And what do boys like? Loud, fast, repetitive patterns, right? Thankfully the books offer more variety than that, but you do have to think of each of the pieces more as mood music or the soundtrack to a movie in order to connect with them musically. It also helps incredibly to listen to Andrea playing excerpts of the pieces:
Each episode of the series contains the same pieces written at three different levels: Early Elementary, Elementary, and Intermediate. The Piano Music for Boys crew has kindly offered to giveaway one set of Episode one to a Music Matters Blog reader. Just leave a comment below to be entered in the drawing. The winner will be drawn using a random number generator at noon (CST) on Thursday, September 15.
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