• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Home
  • Biography
  • Works
    • Upcoming performances
    • Past performances
  • Recordings
  • Listen
  • Gallery
  • News & Views
    • Articles
  • Contact

Colin Matthews

Composer

He has … brought musical architectronics to a personal pitch of mastery.

— Paul Driver, The Sunday Times

Suns Dance (1984-5). 10 players

Cover of score for Suns Dance

Suns Dance, composed between December 1984 and July 1985, is a bright counterpart to my Night’s Mask for soprano and seven instruments (written a year earlier) and shares much material with that piece.  In Night’s Mask an overall very slow tempo is interrupted by two very fast episodes, and Suns Dance takes this fast music as a starting point, its dominant mood being one of energy.  Within a formal scheme of continuous variation (and very little recapitulation) there is an alternation of extended tuttis and concertante solos, the most notable of these being for contrabassoon, oboe, horn and viola in the first half of the piece, and, just before the coda, piccolo and double bass.

Suns Dance was commissioned by the London Sinfonietta with funds made available by the Arts Council, and is dedicated to Donald Mitchell. In 1987 Ashley Page choreographed the work for the Royal Ballet under the title Pursuit.

Categories: Ensemble

Primary Sidebar

Search Works & Recordings

Filter Works

Work categories: START AGAIN

27 April, 2021 - Seascapes (World Premiere)
Nash Ensemble
Wigmore Hall, London

View all performances

Useful Links

Faber Music
NMC Recordings
The Holst Foundation

© 2021 Colin Matthews · Website by Bookswarm

Menu
  • Home
  • Biography
  • Works
    • Upcoming performances
    • Past performances
  • Recordings
  • Listen
  • Gallery
  • News & Views
    • Articles
  • Contact