…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 September, the orchestral tone poem — in no small part because I’d set some pretty lofty goals for my writing for these 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.]