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Work

Dancing Deep-Sadness : for sting orchestra

by Bruce Crossman (2022)

Work Overview

Dancing Deep-Sadness was developed for the Orquesta Marga Marga in Chile during a time of sadness for me, after the passing of my father before the chaos of the worldwide pandemic numbed emotions. The music works as a type of sad emotional residue in its static chromatic sonorities where hints of dance energies-Afro-Cuban salsa son clave and free-jazz energy-crash into distilled spectrums of interval-rich clusters and shimmer chords in slow slabs of sound, inspired by the ritualised stasis of Japanese Gagaku music. The living life thread through these oppositions is a changing timbre coloured solo viola line inflected with Korean gayageum-like rough 'inside-the-note' colour changes that gradually accelerando to an intensification dance moment and then rallentando to almost nothing, ended by a sudden salsa flourish. Its musical form is an intensification structure inspired by Korean gayageum sanjo-an accelerating form. My music uses contrasts of salsa-derived dance material against linear colour-inflected line within periodic spacings of gagaku-derived slow stasis cluster richness that accrue motif elaborations and speed towards a rhythmic dance intensification golden section point, and then dissipates back to a slow stasis. The music intensifies and passes as if life and sorrow had passed through the sound.

Work Details

Year: 2022

Instrumentation: Strings.

Duration: 11 min.

Difficulty: Advanced — Complex rhythmic detail and changing colour nuances

Dedication note: Dedicated to Luis José Recart Echenique (conductor and artistic director) and Orquesta Marga Marga, Valparaíso, Chile

Commission note: commissioned by Dr. Andrián Pertout for the 2022 PUENTE Festival Interoceánico: Encuentro interoceánico de culturas (2022 BRIDGE Interoceanic Festival: Interoceanic Meeting of Cultures), Valparaíso, Chile, 8 November—12 November, 2022

The composer notes the following styles, genres, influences, etc in relation to this work:
Japanese Gagaku spectral chords, Korean sanjo acceleration structure and gayageum ‘inside-the-note’ colours, the New York free-jazz of Matthew Shipp, psychologist Kylie Lapierre’s conceptual ideas on stasis, and Afro-Cuban salsa son clave.

Performances of this work

12 Nov 22: PUENTE Festival Interoceánico: Encuentro interoceánico de culturas (2022 BRIDGE Interoceanic Festival: Interoceanic Meeting of Cultures), Valparaíso, Chile

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