Evan J. Marshall has had a great love for Classical music all his life. Not only does he enjoy hearing and playing works of the master composers, but he also has ardently studied their craft for decades. Evan loves to ponder the nuances of Bach’s counterpoint for hours on end the way others like to tinker with cars and engines. This love of Classical music and of the composer’s craft has been invaluable to Evan for one of his favorite endeavors: Creating original solo mandolin arrangements of Classical masterpieces. 

Throughout the last four centuries, the great composers seldom wrote music specifically for the mandolin, and when they did, sometimes they had to write easy mandolin songs to please aristocratic patrons who played a little mandolin. But the mandolin is capable of virtuosity in the hands of someone with lifelong dedication to the instrument and to the Classical tradition, and Evan has arranged a number of favorite masterpieces for solo mandolin, including: 

-    The concluding Allegro Vivace from Rossini’s William Tell Overture ; 
-    Schubert’s Ave Maria; 
-    Handel’s Pastorale, from Messiah; 
-    Brahms’ Hungarian Dance No. 6.   

Evan’s own pieces show inspiration from the past masters: 
-    Joyful Variations on a Theme of Beethoven, combining original variations on the Ode to Joy theme with excerpts of Symphony No. 9.   
-    Caprice No. 1, modeled after Paganini’s Caprice No. 17.   
-    Vanilla Schubert, an original Theme and Variations.   

One of the principal elements of arranging for solo mandolin is Duo-Style, where the mandolin plays a lyrical melody with tremolo along with a harp-like accompaniment at the same time.   

Evan has performed Concertos for Mandolin and Orchestra by Vivaldi and Hummel, as well as “A Mostly Mozart Mandolin Concerto,” which combines movements from two Mozart Violin Concertos with the Rondo from Hummel’s Mandolin Concerto. “A Mostly Mozart Mandolin Concerto” was one of Evan’s CD releases in 2015, and features three Grand Cadenzas written by Evan, inspired by the cadenzas of Joachim and Kreisler. (Available soon from http://www.cdbaby.com/Artist/EvanJMarshall )