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Paul Lyons Music

solo project with guitar and harmonica & original songs * chromatic harmonica ⁕ piano ⁕ music composition and arranging ⁕ music for film * transcriptions ⁕ music lessons

Paul Lyons - Trombonist, Harmonica, Arranger, Composer

LATEST NEWS

While the world is comes apart at the seams I have been writing music. Had a very inspiring time at the Big Ears Music Festival in Knoxville, Tn.   Presently playing piano with the Ray Martinez and the OGs and solo gigs (guitar and harmonicas) at the Ocean Ale House where they have very good beers on tap and the best fish & chips in town.

Here is a playlist of the Paul Lyons Solo Project . Recent additions are the classic Irish tune, Arthur McBride played with guitar and harp – a short instrumental. I also added John Prine’s Spanish Pipedream – a very fun song.

  1. Arthur McBride Paul Lyons - instrumental featuring harmonica 1:04
  2. Here By My Side Paul Lyons - for those who have lost a love one 2:40
  3. Spanish Pipedream John Prine as Sung by Paul Lyons 4:19
  4. High on a Wire Paul Lyons 2:39
  5. Down by the Railroad Tracks Paul Lyons 4:30
  6. A Stitch in Time Paul Lyons 2:06

April 2025

Big Ears Music Festival: Various reflections. The piece and performance of 26 Little Deaths by Carla Kihlstedt and the Milwaukee New Music Ensemble at Big Ears 2025 was wonderful. It was my favorite concert with a lot of close seconds. Her playing and especially singing were amazing. What control! What nuance! The composition is what many modern pieces attempt to do but fail – it was engaging, funny, inventive (various noises were made with paper and toy pipes) and just really cool. Hopefully the piece will live on. 

Anyway, Big Ears is a great modern music festival. Modern Classical, Jazz, Free Jazz, some Blues and Alternative music, a few interesting pop stars, interesting creative artists from places like Brazil and Spain. A Brazilian pianist blew us away – Amado Freitas. He is a virtuoso and his set had many parts where he prepared the piano with various percussion instruments. A bit Steve Reich, a bit Amazonian, a bit New York. Pretty amazing. After almost every piece he got a standing ovation. I also really enjoyed a drummer named Barry Altschul who is 82 and still playing some down-home free jazz ala Ornette. They just tore it up with a huge dose of humor.

December 2023

Manny Martinez – EVOLUTION has been released. I wrote some of the arrangements on the album. Check it out!
You can purchase the sheet music of arrangements that I have done through the years starting with the charts for Azabache. These are digital downloads as pdfs.