Music by William Ashworth
folk music
If the background sounds are turned on in your browser, you should be listening to a tune by Turlough O'Carolan called "Beauty in Tears." This is a MIDI realization of a chart prepared by William Ashworth for Peter Street, an Irish folk band formed in 1996. In its four-year life, Peter Street played parties, libraries, one-world celebrations, and several folk festivals (including a standing gig at the Northwest FolkLife Festival in Seattle). Ashworth played Celtic harp, pennywhistle, and guitar; others in the band included Melody Ashworth, fiddle; Teresa Dopyera, pennywhistle; Phil Colvard, guitar; and Tom Scheutz, bodhran. The MIDI sound approximates a band performance; a bit of the true sound of the band may be added to this page in the future. (If you don't hear anything, try clicking the link below.)
Prior to Peter Street there was Kalmiopsis, an international folk dance band that also played Northwest FolkLife; here is a MIDI approximation of its sound, part of a tune called "Rustemul."
concert music
Ashworth approaches folk band arranging from a background in serious composition - he holds a master's degree in theory and composition from Washington State University - and piano pieces, songs, and chamber music have continued to flow (if a bit sporadically) throughout his life. Here are links to MIDI realizations of two of his works for piano:
"Rain" is a dodecaphonic composition from the mid-seventies, pointillistic and rather Webernesque; the score is headed by a line from e. e. cummings:
nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands.
"Ballade" is neo-Brahmsian in character and represents the current direction of Ashworth's work. It is the last movement of a Suite for Piano which also includes a Fanfare, a Romanza, an Intermezzo, and a Waltz. Other recent works include a fantasia on the Shaker melody "Simple Gifts" and a song cycle on seven poems from A. E. Houseman's "A Shropeshire Lad."
other music
To round things out stylistically, here is Ashworth's 1983 Windigo Rag (.mid file, 15K).