Screaming Mary Music was founded by Glen Shannon in 1998 when the Prelude & Fugue in D Minor for SSATB recorders (now published as SMM100) won first prize in 1997 in the biennial composition contest sponsored by the Chicago Chapter of the American Recorder Society. The main focus is publishing music for recorder ensembles, but that could change at any moment. One of the basic rules of my music is that all parts are interesting - after spending years in high school and college concert bands, I learned that it's boring playing all whole-notes on the contrabass clarinet, or in the third clarinet section. So I like to keep everyone interested. The Prelude & Fugue is an excellent example of that philosophy

About the logo and Screaming Mary
The original drawing of the face was made in 1992, for a friend who lived in an apartment down the hall from mine in Oakland. He wanted to design a t-shirt making fun of snobby San Franciscans who refuse to cross the Bay Bridge and come to Oakland. The concept of the shirt was "Oakland... it's so F-A-A-A-A-R!" and the face is in the middle of sneering the word "far". I took the drawing to work and it was instantly dubbed Screaming Mary by the receptionist. Since then, Screaming Mary has been my little trademark and it was only natural to put her on the cover of my music publications. It stops me from taking myself too seriously!

Software
Screaming Mary Music's newer publications are produced using Sibelius. Earlier books were done using CakeWalk's (formerly Opcode's) Overture 2.0, whose music typesetting appearance I eventually found lacking and amateurish in some intangible way. The two remaining books in my inventory done in OV, the Vivaldi (SMM200) and Bach (SMM202), were ready to go to press by most people's standards, but I spent NINE HOURS on each one to get them just to look like they do now. I decided that was unacceptable and started shopping around, ultimately choosing Sibelius. The covers and front matter are done in QuarkXPress.

Photo: Ken Alan

About Glen Shannon
I was born in Buffalo, NY in October 1966, the third of five children. My older brother and sister are also musicians - my sister Tammy is an excellent guitarist and songwriter playing since she was seven, about the same time my brother Sean got his first drumset. Now he is a professional rock drummer, until recently touring with Molly Hatchet after playing for a couple years with Pat Travers. Sean also writes and records original country music in his recording studio, and has a self-produced CD out. My younger sister Erin is a writer in the Adirondacks, and the youngest sister, Meghan, is a veterinarian in Colorado.

The first time I encountered a recorder was in third grade, when everyone had to learn it. The school used it as a litmus test of musical aptitude, which then helped determine who would be in the school band. I was a natural at it (at least compared to the other kids) and joined the band the next year as the first-chair clarinet. It wasn't until years later that I learned there were any other sizes of recorder besides the soprano!

My musical training consists of spending my teen years learning volumes of JS Bach's work by heart, and a couple theory classes while an undergrad at Cornell University (class of '88). Bach's preludes, fantasias, toccatas and fugues for organ were my particular favorites and at age twelve I started writing music which emulated his style. Of course it was crap, but you have to start somewhere, right? Since then I've refined my own style of composing - now that I know some of the rules, I like to break them with impunity. It makes me feel dirty.

In addition to composing music I am also involved with the East Bay Recorder Society, where I was the President for three years, and now I'm arranging workshops and publicity.

I actually have a nice day job at a small graphics company in San Francisco called TechArt International, which specializes in digital prepress, film production, graphics and web design in East Asian languages (Chinese, Japanese, Korean).