About this product

Product Identifiers

Record LabelCD Baby, Cdb

UPC0783707522722

eBay Product ID (ePID)6046069366

Product Key Features

FormatCD

Release Year2002

GenreLatin Pop/Rock

ArtistKaren Bentley

Release TitleDancing Suite to Suite

Dimensions

Item Height0.40 in

Item Weight0.25 lb

Item Length5.60 in

Item Width4.90 in

Additional Product Features

Number of Tracks12

Number of Discs1

TracksFlamenco Alojera, Ziga Dance, Rhumba de la Luna, Jig for Alan, Redhaired Tango, Salsa for Karen, Allemanda, Corrente, Sarabanda, Giga, Ciaccona, Fanitullen

NotesDancing Suite to Suite Dancing Suite to Suite is the fruition of the search for roots musical and genealogical. I first set foot on my ancestral land of Norway in July 1998. Landing in Oslo, I was greeted by my cousin Jens Moe who whisked me straight away to Telemark to meet the hardangerfele player Tarjei Romtveit at his bucolic home in Vijne where we fiddled for most of the afternoon. Lodgings were in a hytte with a sod roof by a rolling stream in Mjonoy where we resumed the fiddlefest the following day. I had been yearning for a hardangerfele lesson since my childhood, intrigued by the intricately inlaid Norwegian violin with five sympathetically vibrating strings underneath the bridge. Tarjei taught me his favorite tunes, which I preserved on DAT tape for future practice sessions. Jens and I searched for Noekken and other trolls during our midnight hikes in the rustic forest. After several days in Oslo, I made the pilgrimage to the family island near Kragero where I met more cousins, and slept in the same bed as my great uncle Tillman Breiseth had years ago while on vacation from teaching Ibsen at the University of Oslo. I gathered enough Nordic inspiration for the trek to Denmark where I was engaged to play several solo violin recitals at Klint, a community which gathers each summer to study the writings of the Danish cosmologist Martinus. I played the concerts at Klint for an enthusiastic audience. After the second concert, Ole Saxe invited me to jam with him on drums and piano on any evening after dinner, but I was far too interested in hiking along the coast of Nykoebing Sjaelland at midnight. So our musicmaking did not begin until I received the gift of the score Salsa for Karen in September 1998. The notes leapt off the page, demanding idiomatic interpretation. I learned the gem in a week and it quickly became a staple of my repertoire as an encore, or by adding Nigerian clay pot (udu) played by Ian Dogole during our duo recitals. I was elated to have such a dynamic piece in my arsenal. Following the suggestions of a friend, I requested an entire suite from Ole Saxe based on the model established by Johann Sebastian Bach: multinational dances related by key comprising an organic whole. Within several weeks Jig for Alan appeared as a gif file on my computer. Then followed the Ziga Dance, Rhumba de la Luna, Redhaired Tango, and finally the Flamenco Alojera, all composed by the end of March 2000. These dances reflect Ole's background in folk themes and rhythms and are vivacious and intoxicating to practice and perform. We finally premiered the Dance Suite in it's entirety in Palo Alto, California on December 8, 2000 at 8:45 pm, following a performance of Bach's D minor Partita. Ole was present for the premiere and the subsequent performance at Anna and Frank Pope's ballroom in San Francisco. We were further encouraged by a grant from the Community Foundation of Silicon Valley as well as Maestro Eric Kujawsky requesting Ole to orchestrate the Dance Suite for a performance with the Redwood Symphony in April 2002. On October 23 and 24, 2001 we recorded Dancing Suite to Suite at Skywalker Ranch. We added Odd Bakkerud's epic hardangerfele tune Fanitullen as a spice to this recording which celebrates the joy released by the chance encounters that led to this Swedish American collaboration. It is purported in Scandinavian mythology that a fiddler must spend time in the water to achieve excellence and inspiration. The cover photo represents a fiddler seated on a rock in a stream at the base of Mount Shasta, absorbing fluidity and virtuosity from Noekken the water spirit. Karen Bentley Dance Suite for Solo Violin, by Ole Pullar Saxe Salsa for Karen, dedicated to my special violin muse, is the origin of the whole suite. From a concert in Klint in Denmark, where Karen played part of the Sibelius Violin Concerto, as well as the Flight of the Bumblebee by Rimsky-Korsakov, came the idea to write a salsa, especially for Kare