…or as finished as anything is here, but I’ll be making very minor changes after today. I’m so very proud of this work! It required a great deal more effort than even the orchestral tone poem — in no small part because I’d set some pretty lofty goals for my writing for these the instruments. (Yeah, and then there’s summer…who does serious work in the summer?)

Here are the details:

• Playback: Click here.
• Project page: Click here (lots more details there!)
• Title: Je danse, J’apprends (“I dance, I learn”). Although only two of the four movements have genuine French roots, a third often appears alongside French dances in compositions of the period (18th-19th Centuries). The fourth is a reel, which is mostly British Isles in origin.
• Four movements/dances: La Spagnoletta, Gigue, Gavotte/Musette, Reel, though the work plays continuously front to back.
• Ensemble: Piano quintet (two violins, viola, ‘cello, piano), single percussionist.
• Percussion: Each dance features a different percussion instrument, which serves to introduce each dance. The first movement has a long marimba intro. The final movement closes with a 4-concert-tom flourish.
• Run-time: about 15 minutes.

This work is easily the most instrumentally demanding of my compositions so far, most notably in the last movement where everything moves at a very fast clip. And, as you might expect, the tonalities and forms aren’t terribly traditional, but I was true to the overall goals — these dances are very definitely dance-like, with rhythm as a compositional focus, and at least a passing nod to the characteristics of their stylistic namesakes.

[A quick note: if you’re following me on YouTube, you have certainly noticed by now that videos there come and go, the results of YouTube’s decision not to allow updates, only new content. So when I make a change, a link you might have to a composition there will disappear. If you watch things on this website, that’s not a problem, since this place will always have a good link to the latest version.]