Composers Datebook™ is a daily two-minute program designed to inform, engage, and entertain listeners with timely information about composers of the past and present. Each program notes significant or intriguing musical events involving composers of the past and present, with appropriate and accessible music related to each.
Kernis goes dancing
Synopsis
A new guitar concerto by Aaron Jay Kernis received its premiere at a Minnesota Orchestra concert on today’s date in 1999. The idea for this concerto was prompted by a friend of Kernis’s, guitarist David Tanenbaum, who was looking for a new work for guitar and orchestra that he could pair with the most performed of all such works, Joaquín Rodrigo's “Concierto de Aranjuez.”
For his new concerto, Kernis reworked parts of two earlier works he had composed for Tannenbaum: part of a Partita for solo guitar became the concerto’s opening movement, followed by two movements drawn from a Kernis chamber work for guitar and string quartet entitled “100 Greatest Dance Hits.”
The middle movement, entitled "Slow Dance Ballad" is, says Kernis, "the kind of music my parents would like – what they hope to find on the radio dial." In its original form, this movement was entitled “MOR, i.e. Middle of the Road: Easy Listening.”
The concerto’s finale is entitled "Salsa Posada," a Spanish pun referring both to the craze for old fashioned salsa dancing and the condiment of the same name, perhaps a little “off” or past its prime.
Aaron Jay Kernis (b. 1960) 100 Greatest Dance Hits (David Tanenbaum, guitar; The Chester Quartet) New Albion 083