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Biography - Donald Rath Jr. – Composer, Arranger & Guitarist
On January 14th 1956 in a small suburb of Cincinnati Ohio a healthy lad was born to this world. He would later become a Composer of instrumental music. The road to his success was long and contained many detours and rest stops.
Donald Rath Jr. was raised on a Dairy farm in Illinois. As a toddler, he would sit in awe listening while his Mother created amazing sounds on the organ. It was from this early impression that he began to pursue his interest in music. During his fourth year of Grade School, Don began to play an instrument known as the Flute-O-Phone and later the Cornet. During his freshman year in High School he was introduced to the Guitar by one of his close friends. After a few Guitar lessons, he began to pick out some basic musical ideas that were to become his first compositions. It was from these beginnings that music became his prime passion and interest for personal expression.
He continued to play Guitar for many years until typical life influences caused him to put his musical aspirations on hold. Then in 1990, he began to play again, this time with much more passion and interest. He taught himself to read and notate music and he began a serious study of music composition. A left hand crush injury in 1993 caused him to realize the importance of formalizing his original music. Fearing the inability of being able to play the Guitar, he used it to his advantage as Physical Therapy. Not permitting multiple surgeries to keep him from his musical pursuits, Don continued to practice the Guitar, study music, music composition and to notate his original music by hand.
The Great Flood in 1993 in St. Louis interrupted his efforts to complete the goal of recording his first album. Then in 1997 he was able to produce his first CD titled “Night Wind”. It was a collection of 19 original short pieces for solo guitar. The CD was never formally released since his playing skills were lessened by his injury and the recordings were not at the level expected for a public release. For the next nine years he practiced Classical Guitar from two to four hours per day in an effort to regain his Guitar playing skills to performance levels.
The loss of his mother in late 2005 was another turning point in his life. He is now pursuing a new goal, to establish himself as a composer of Classical music for the stringed instruments. The emotional impact over the loss of his mother resulted in the completion of over 40 compositions in 2006 alone. Musically, the big difference was, he is now arranging his music primarily for the String Quartet and Quintet using a music notation program called Sibelius.
The release of his debut album “Heart Strings” on January 3rd 2007 was followed by the release of his second CD titled “Dawn of a New Day” on March 21st. These two albums are companion CD’s offering 24 compositions sure to soothe your soul! Both CD’s are available on the StringTunes website, iTunes, CDBaby, Rhapsody, the new Napster and a host of other digital music websites. At http://www.stringtunes.com single song and CD purchases are available. Also, you can listen to the entire length of each of the songs included on both albums and read the stories behind the songs.
Don is currently working on his third album yet to be titled and due for release still in 2007. Future plans include a remix of “Night Wind” for solo guitar, a traditional Christmas album for strings and the production of 5 additional original instrumental music albums, music notation books for each and a surprise for his Cello playing friends!