Eight Elizabethan Dances

Eight Elizabethan Dances is a collection of 18th-century dances for solo piano of various Old English styles. In a lurid atmosphere of rhythms and lyrical melodies full of grand waves of sound, these eight interludes simmer in a gritty neo-Classically and subtlety medieval, raw work of jagged edges, using different voices and styles to color this grippingly eclectic and picturesque work.

It is a rich collection of pleasurable successive dance-inflected styles that spin exotic and colorful materials across the full extent of the piano’s range. Conventional in form, each dance is a separate, fresh and imaginative approach to the post-minimalist idioms of our times. Much of the score is an evocative musical portrait, infused with highly accessible, animated rhythms and melodies that alternate between lush passages of remote beauty and echoes of dramatic, whimsical splendor of peasant songs, courtly dances, and unexpected humorous scherzandos, that add to the suite’s sense of individuality and style between contrasting movements.

MOVEMENTS: 1.) Volta; 2.) Bransle d’Ecosse; 3.) Almain; 4.) Gigue; 5.) Cinq Pas; 6.) Sarabande; 7.) Gavotte; 8.) Pavane