Marigold ~ Billy Mayerl

Marigold by Billy Mayerl

Billy Mayerl was often considered to be the 'English Gershwin' and left a dazzling legacy of British light music for the piano.

Thank you to Aria Music Salon, Yokohama.

[graceboxer]

I have such a vivid memory of my Mum playing this when I was a kid. She never quite got beyond the 'tune' bit but we all loved it - and her.

[andrescruz]

My cat's named Marigold, I will play this to her, I'm sure she'll love it.

[bobcollins]

Wonderfully played and such a bright performance.

[Ralphs-House]

Means everything to me. My Dad used to play it a lot. Agree, hard to play well.

[highlandmalt]

Fantastic to hear this piece played so well, I know it's tricky to play well! - I have a printed copy which was my grandfather's which he probably bought when studying as a pianist at the RCM in the 1930's. Their paths may well have crossed during that time for all I know.

[mikekirby]

Reminds me of the theme music to an old Francis Durbridge radio series.

[syhooverman]

This interpretation is just PERFECT, well done.

[panosteve]

Excellent... You rarely hear this played as well as you do (it's a bit of a killer piece). Thanks for an enjoyable few minutes.

[dennischiapello]

Great performance--spirited and crystal clear. I appreciate the full keyboard view; it's helping me solve a few of the technical difficulties for my own practice. The sequence of tremolos in the right hand is the hardest, but the fingering for all the parallel fourths is tricky--I never know for sure if I've found the best alternative. I can't see your actual fingers, but your hand positions give me some good clues.

[yassiniqbal]

All those perfect fourths! Well done - it’s seriously difficult to play well 🎉

[sueannrozells]

This is so beautifully played.. such control and still making the piece sound so fun and light (its seriously HARD to play this piece..). You made it look easy!

[sandralambert]

Hello would you be kind enough to share the fingering you use in bars 7-12 please? This is going to be my lockdown learning. Thanking you in advance. You sound fab BTW

[JonathonNeville]

Fantastic! I have the sheet music for this and around 40 other Mayerl works. I tried to convert them from PDF to Musescore (.mscz) / MusicXML, using MuseScore.com/import - which uses the open source software AudiVeris, but 15 songs could not be converted, and the 6 that were converted were very badly converted. Do you know any way we can get the sheet music into MuseScore or OpenScore or any other interactive sheet music format? (If you have sheet music, your sheets might be in better condition than my old sheets, so you might have more success if you want to try scanning and uploading to MuseScore. I realize that might be more trouble than you care for.) Thanks for your awesome performance, keeping Mayerl alive! My uncle, John F. Archer, wrote a book about Mayerl.

[tehee-]

I wonder how difficult to play this really is. I play in a pop piano style, perhaps I should start working on a more jazzy, Gershwin-type piano style.

[jimsmethurst]

Marigold, ah yes ... who was she I wonder?

[neilkilleen]

Great performance- I really don’t like Mayerls own recordings as he just bashes through them !