William Grant Still's 'Danzas de Panama' at Southwest Chamber Music Summer Festival July 10 & 11

[Africa: Piano Music of William Grant Still; Denver Oldham, piano; Koch 3 7084 2H1 (1991)]

SWMusic.org

PROGRAM One

Saturday, July 10 & Sunday, July 11

Carl Friedrich Abel (1723-1787)

String Quartet in B flat major, Op. 8, No. 2

Allegro con spirito

Adagio

Tempo di Minuetto

Benjamin Britten (1913-1976)

Phantasy Quartet for Oboe & Strings

Thea Musgrave (b. 1928)

Cantilena for Oboe & Strings (U.S. Premiere)

William Grant Still (1895-1978)

Danzas de Panama

Tamborito

Mejorana y Socavon

Punto

Cumbia y Congo

Antonín Dvorák (1841-1904)

String Quartet in F major, Op. 96 “American”

Allegro ma non troppo

Lento

Molto vivace

Vivace ma non troppo

Danzas de Panama by William Grant Still

“When William was only a few months old, his father died and his mother took him to Little Rock, Arkansas, where she taught English in the high school. There his musical education began - with violin lessons from a private teacher, and with later inspiration from the Red Seal operatic recordings bought for him by his stepfather.”

“Music for the native dancers of Panama has been notated so infrequently that it is still unknown to people outside of the country itself. It was Narciso Garay who first called the attention of Elizabeth Waldo to it and she, in turn, interested the American William Grant Still in developing it for concert use. Mr. Still has written, on Panamanian dance themes collected by Miss Waldo, a work which is adaptable to string quartet or string orchestra. Nothing like it was done before in the literature for strings. Mr. Still departed from traditional practices by making an attempt to approximate the sounds of native instruments, giving the music an unusually interesting quality. There is a distinct unity and a touch of Caribbean color in the four dances. The first and last are African in origin, probably brought by the first slaves imported into Panama, while the second and third are of Spanish-Indian derivation. [William Grant Still (1895-1978) is profiled at AfriClassical.com, where a complete Works List by Prof. Dominique-René de Lerma is found.]