Border Merger (Tearing Down the Waltz) v4

drakonis

Imagine a Mexican quintette playing a fast waltz. There are 3 melodies played in 3/4 time, in a sort of non-standard ABCABC format. The title is a photographic/geographic/melodic play on words. There is a merging of European waltz and Mexican-sounding instrumentation.

This version has an improved sampled violin, as well as the real trumpet performance from the prior version. The great Russian jazz trumpet player Vladimir Galaktionov ( http://www.macjams.com/artist/jazzru ) had graciously read my score and recorded his performance of this piece, and I have replaced the sampled trumpet with his live recorded performance. Anyone want to play the violin part live for this?

This has become a programmatic work for me, and the vision I have tried to capture in the music follows:

[Intro] The warm evening twilight brings a light scent of jasmine across a courtyard in Southern California, and a Mexican band begins playing a waltz. A young gentleman saunters over to a lady, who is shyly swaying to the music. He asks her to dance with him, and she accepts his hand. They sway together onto the dance floor.

[Melody 1] The dance begins with them dancing formally, with respectable distance between them. He is looking over her shoulder and leading gently, and her head is demurely bowed.

[Melody 2-3] As the dance progresses, she gains confidence and begins to look at him, and he at her, and they dance closer.

[Repeat Melody 1-3] Still unsure of each other, they return to the formal beginning of the dance. Again, they begin to feel the joyful warmth of each other and pull closer.

[Modulation] Playfully, the lady pulls away from him and out into the spotlight.

[Bridge/Melody 1] The gentleman watches as she performs her own twirling dance, just for him. He smiles and begins to clap his raised hands in time to the beat of her version of the dance.

[Melody 1-repeat] At the end of the repeat, he steps in and they dance together with increasing flair and passion.

[Melody 2-3] They flow together, seeing only each other. The rest of the world has melted away.

[Finale] As the music ends, the gentleman pulls the lady close to him, then dramatically dips her to the side.

Ah, to make this a reality with a real band playing this for my wife and I to dance to… but in the mean time, please comment on this and let us know what you think of it.