Preparations are underway for the next piano recital on August 4th. I decided that the theme would be dance music this year, inspired by an amazing box of sheet music that a friend of mine rescued from the OSU dance department. I suddenly found myself in possession of a lot of rare and wonderful contemporary folios from the 1930’s – 1960’s and I wanted to put them to good use.

Many people aren’t aware that much of the classical piano literature we encounter on a daily basis was actually composed for parties and dancing! A minuet, for example is a dance in 3/4 time and considered the precursor of the waltz. Other dance forms include the allemande, sarabande, bouree, chaconne, and galliard. Check out this exhaustive list of dance forms at wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_dances

So the students and I have been reviewing potential recital pieces and are settling on their choices for the last couple of weeks. True to my usual form, it will be an entire summer of dance music as we all take a break from our lesson books and use the summer months to strengthen our repertoires and explore the theme.