Bang on a Can Cantaloupe Music

Composer Martin Bresnick returns to follow up his first Cantaloupe release, The Essential Martin Bresnick (2006) with Caprichos Enfaticos (Emphatic Caprices). A concerto in eight movements for piano/keyboard and percussion quartet, Caprichos Enfaticos was commissioned by Meet the Composer for Cantaloupe artists Lisa Moore, pianist, and So Percussion. The 8 movements are accompanied by interpolated DVD projections (available on Youtube), created by Johanna Bresnick based on Francisco Goya's book of etchings Los Destastres de la Guerra, or The Disasters of War, a piece that laments the excesses and tragedies of war.

Says Bresnick, "The titles of the eight movements are either by Goya himself, or suggested by his ideas. A farandula, or farandole, was a chain dance popular in Provence, although it's origins are much older. The dance is often in 6/8 time, with a moderate to fast tempo. In modern Spanish, a farandula is a company of actors."

Martin Bresnick is presently the Professor of Composition and Coordinator of the Composition Department at the Yale School of Music. His principal teachers of composition include Gyorgy Ligeti, John Chowning, and Gottfried von Einem.