Dancing Suite to Suite

Beskrivning

This is a unique meeting between Bach’s classical Partita No.2 in D minor, a suite of 5 dances and Saxe’s Dancing suite of 6 modern dances for soloviolin/viola. Karen Bentley, a popular violinist from the San Francisco Bay area, actually performs this music, ”dancing suite to suite” with hip and foot movements in Saxes Flamenco, Ziga (Balkan), Rhumba (viola), Jig, Tango and Salsa.

Karen Bentley expresses a warm tone and a flowing energy with a wild sense of rhythm in her inter pretation of this dance suite, just as light as the divine depth and contemplationin Bach’s Partita in the dances of the time: Allemande, Courante, Sarabande, Giga and the legendary great Ciaccona. In a peculiar way these two suites float together in a natural conjunction, as if no time had passed in between. Karen has performed this music at many concerts both as a solo artist and with a percussionist, and she recently performed the opening of the orchestral version composed by Ole Saxe, specially for Redwood Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Eric Kujawsky, in April 2002. Wherever Karen is on stage, dancing and playing her violin, she charms her audience to standing ovations.

Total playing time: 75:26

This album is very close to a live recording experience, as it is recorded at Skywalker Ranch exclusive studios, where we have succeeded to create a very warm and living experience of musical presence. On the last track Karen takes her Norwegian Hardanger violin in Fanitullen by Odd Bakkerud and follows Näcken in her search for her Norwegian roots.

The album is available on Spotify here: