Search - Johann Sebastian Bach Pullar Saxe, Karen Bentley :: Dancing Suite to Suite

Dancing Suite to Suite is a unique rendezvous between Johann Sebastian Bach´s classical Partita No. 2 in D minor for solo violin and Ole Pullar Saxe´s Dance Suite for Solo Violin. Karen Bentley, a popular violinist from the San Francisco Bay area, performs these dances actually dancing suite to suite, with hip movements, violin slapping and foot stomping in Saxe's Flamenco, Ziga (Balkan), Rhumba (viola), Jig, Tango and Salsa. She expresses a warm and flowing tone and a wild sense of rhythmic abandon in a passionate interpretation of this Dance Suite as well as a divine bliss and tender subtlety in Bach´s Partita through the dances of the Baroque era: Allemanda, Corrente, Sarabanda, Giga, culminating with the legendary Ciaccona. These two Suites flow together in a natural conjunction of timelessness. Karen has performed this music at numerous concerts, both as solo violinist and with multi-percussionist Ian Dogole, and she premiered the Dance Suite for Solo Violin and Orchestra composed by Ole Pullar Saxe especially for the Redwood Symphony in California, directed by Eric Kujawsky on April 21, 2002. Whenever Karen is on stage, dancing and playing her violin, the audience is thrilled to standing ovations. This album is very close to a live music experience at its best, recorded at Skywalker Ranch Soundstage to bring you a very warm and living quality of musical presence and vitality. On the last track Karen grabs her Norwegian Hardangerfele in a lively rendition of the epic tune Fanitullen by Odd Bakkerud, to join the mythic creature Noekken in search of her ancestral roots.