Dancing blue crabs!

PROGRAM NOTE

Composing music can be a long process but always begins with one source of inspiration. Creating “Dancing Blue Crabs” for the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra’s Centenary Encore Project was a challenging, unique task that began with a list of audience suggestions. Looking through 190 suggestions was...interesting...to say the least. I was one step away before giving up, until I got suggestion #154. Three short words that read: “Dancin’ blue crabs!” This suggestion was accompanied by a brief explanation: “a dance that sounds the way we might see crabs moving.” Being the nice Jewish boy I am, my experience with crabs is quite limited. Did blue crabs dance?

Shortly after reading this audience suggestion, someone showed me a video of a blue crab dancing. The video was so funny that it instantly became the inspiration for the encore. My experience watching the blue crabs dancing is portrayed in this fun, short piece that increases the solo contrabassoon repertoire by 100%! Its dedication reads, “Happy 100, hon’.”