Gann Dances (but Only Privately)

I just received an excellent CDR recording of a new piece of mine, Private Dances for piano, played exquisitely by Sarah Cahill - in her hands, in fact, a couple of the movements are more beautiful than I imagined they could be. I wrote the piece because for years I've been such a big fan of William Duckworth's multi-movement pieces like The Time Curve Preludes and Imaginary Dances, and they made me want to write a piece as a series of brief movements, something I'd never done. What Duckworth achieves that I didn't was a way to link the pieces convincingly as a series, like Schumann; my dances are more self-contained, but I'm happy with them. I've posted the piece to my web page and on Postclassic Radio, and I post it here as well. You can listen to the whole piece:

Private Dances (timing - 23:44)

or to individual movements:

1. Sexy
2. Sad
3. Sultry
4. Sentimental
5. Saintly
6. Swingin'

and you can find the scores here as PDFs if you want. Hell, you can take 'em and play 'em on your own piano. [UPDATE: My PDFs, made via Sibelius on a Mac, download and print just fine on some computers, but on others either won't print correctly or possibly won't download at all. I don't know what the problem is, or what to do about it, except that friends have had luck trying it on different computers until they find one that works. Advice appreciated.]

April 12, 2005 8:13 PM |

Categories:

Sites To See

Postclassic Radio! - Kyle Gann's internet radio station that accompanies the blog; see the playlist at kylegann.com

American Mavericks - the Minnesota Public radio program about American music (scripted by Kyle Gann with Tom Voegeli)

Kalvos & Damian's New Music Bazaar - a cornucopia of music, interviews, information by, with, and on hundreds of intriguing composers who are not the Usual Suspects

Iridian Radio - an intelligently mellow new-music station

New Music Box - the premiere site for keeping up with what American composers are doing and thinking

The Rest Is Noise - The fine blog of critic Alex Ross

William Duckworth's Cathedral - the first interactive web composition and home page of a great postminimalist composer

Mikel Rouse's Home Page - the greatest opera composer of my generation

Eve Beglarian's Home Page - great Downtown composer

Just Intonation Network - a meeting place for people interested in alternative tunings

Erling Wold's Web Site - a fine San Francisco composer of deceptively simple-seeming music, and a model web site

The Dane Rudhyar Archive - the complete site for the music, poetry, painting, and ideas of a greatly underrated composer who became America's greatest astrologer

Utopian Turtletop, John Shaw's thoughtful blog about new music and other issues

About this Entry

This page contains a single entry by PostClassic published on April 12, 2005 8:13 PM.

Extra! Extra! It's the Same Old Same Old! was the previous entry in this blog.

111 Opuses is the next entry in this blog.

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