Tango-Passacaglia

flute with piano trio

commissioned by flutist Elizabeth Robinson

premiered at the Ball State University Festival of New Music, February 2010

Duration: c.6-6.5 minutes

Tango-Passacaglia uses the variation form to explore the rhythmic tensions and surging dramatic undercurrent that I hear in tango, and the tango to dirty up the staid and intellectual passacaglia that I love as a form. It was commissioned by flutist Elizabeth Robinson for her doctoral recital, and was conceived as something of a super-miniature concerto for flute. The closing makes fond reference to a work by my old composition teacher C. Curtis-Smith, with whom I was studying when I first approached writing a tango years ago.