I. Overture

II. Waltz

III. Adagio

IV. Tarantella

Gazebo Dances was conceived as a four-hand piano work for the composer’s friends in 1972. The band setting was commissioned by the Indiana State Council for the Arts and premiered by the University of Evansville Wind Ensemble, conducted by Robert Bailey, on May 6, 1973. A version for orchestra was premiered by the Haddonfield Symphony of Woodbury, New Jersey in 1981. This grouping of four whimsical dances constitutes a nostalgic memory of pavilion concerts on the village green during lazy summer evenings. The Overture, a modern Rossini-like movement, is followed by a peg-leg Waltz in which the “oom-pah-pah" sometimes lacks a path. Then comes a long-lined Adagio and a final spirited Tarantella, which alternates moments of great pseudo seriousness with bouncing spirits.

John Paul Corigliano grew up in a musical environment, where his mother was a gifted pianist, and his father, the late John Corigliano Sr., was concertmaster of the New York Philharmonic for 23 years. According to Harold Schonberg of The New York Times, Corigliano has become “one of America’s most important composers.” He is considered a communicator with a fine grasp of melody and rhythm. Eleanor Caldwell describes his music as “accessible, unstrained, and with a few of the pseudo-romantic agonies associated with self-conscious avant-gardism...he makes no hard and fast distinctions between serious and popular music...” 

Many of Corigliano’s compositions have been commissioned and/or premiered by renowned soloists, including Stanley Drucker, clarinet; James Galway, flute; Bert Lucarelli, oboe; Yoko Matsudo, violin; Scott Mouton, organ; William Walker, baritone; and pianists Hilde Somer and James Tocco. Commissions have also been received from the Boston Symphony, Chicago Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Metropolitan Opera, New York Philharmonic, St. Louis Symphony, San Antonio Symphony, and others.

Program note extracted from Program Notes for Band